CHAPTER X. SIR JOHN BEAUMONT AND DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN. SIR JOHN BEAUMONT, born in 1582, elder brother to the dramatist who wrote along with Fletcher, has left amongst his poems a few fine religious ones. From them I choose the following: OF THE EPIPHANY. Fair eastern star, that art ordained to run Here cease thy course, and wonder that the cloud Let Herod's palace still continue dark; Each school and synagogue thy force repels, The temple, where the priests maintain their choir, THE PRINCE OF LIFE. Here shines no golden roof, no ivory stair, Girt with attendants, or by heralds styled, Their treasures, offering incense, myrrh, and gold. The Prince of Peace, who, thankful for his bed, The glorious blessings which his laws prepare, No storms shall cross, nor glittering lights deface 143 The creatures, no longer offered on his altar, standing around the Prince of Life, to whom they have given a bed, is a lovely idea. The end is hardly worthy of the rest, though there is fine thought involved in it. The following contains an utterance of personal experience, the truth of which will be recognized by all to whom heavenly aspiration and needful disappointment are not unknown. 1 Should this be "in fees;" that is, in acknowledgment of his feudal sovereignty? IN DESOLATION. O thou who sweetly bend'st my stubborn will, I see what man is, being left alone. My substance, which from nothing did begin, Some whispering gale straight charmed them down again; On my devotions in his manger smiled; While then I simply walked, nor heed could take ANNUNCIATION AND RESURRECTION. 145 Yet in that state this only good I found, That fewer spots did then my conscience wound; judge. I will not wish that golden age again Which better fits the bright celestial choir. In mine afflictions; to obey his voice, As well when threatenings my defects reprove, To say to him, in every time and place, "Withdraw thy comforts, so thou leave thy grace." Surely this is as genuine an utterance, whatever its merits as a poem-and those I judge not small-as ever flowed from Christian heart! Chiefly for the sake of its beauty, I give the last passage of a poem written upon occasion of the feasts of the Annunciation and the Resurrection falling on the same day. S.L. IV. Let faithful souls this double feast attend L In glowing roses fervent zeal they bear, William Drummond of Hawthornden, a Scotchman, born in 1585, may almost be looked upon as the harbinger of a fresh outburst of word-music. No. doubt all the great poets have now and then broken forth in lyrical jubilation. Ponderous Ben Jonson himself, when he takes to song, will sing in the joy of the very sound; but great men have always so much. graver work to do, that they comparatively seldom indulge in this kind of melody. Drummond excels in madrigals, or canzonets- baby-odes or songswhich have more of wing and less of thought than sonnets. Through the greater part of his verse we hear a certain muffled tone of the sweetest, like the music that ever threatens to break out clear from the brook, from the pines, from the rain-shower,never does break out clear, but remains a suggested, etherially vanishing tone. His is a voix voilée, or veiled voice of song. It is true that in the time we are now approaching far more attention was paid not merely to the smoothness but to the melody of verse than any except the great masters had paid before; but some are at the door, who, not being great masters, yet do their inferior part nearly as well as they their higher, uttering a music of marvellous and individual sweetness, which no mere musical care could secure, but which springs essentially from music in the thought gathering to itself musical words in melodious |