Where hawks, sea-owls, and long-tongued bittours bred,
And other birds their shady pinions spread;
All fowls maritimal; none roosted there,
But those whose labours in the waters were.
A vine did all the hollow cave embrace,
Still green, yet still ripe bunches gave it grace.
Four fountains, one against another, pour'd
Their silver streams; and meadows all enflower'd
With sweet balm-gentle, and blue violets hid,
That deck'd the soft breasts of each fragrant mead.
Should any one, though he immortal were,
Arrive and see the sacred objects there,
He would admire them, and be over-joy'd ;
And so stood Hermes' ravish'd powers employ'd.
But having all admir'd, he enter’d on
The ample cave, nor could be seen unknown
Of great Calypso (for all Deities are
Prompt in each other's knowledge, though so far
Sever'd in dwellings) but he could not see
Ulysses there within; without was he
Set sad ashore, where 'twas his use to view
Th' unquiet sea, sigh'd, wept, and empty drew
His heart of comfort.
ODYSSEUS' SPEECH TO NAUSICAA.
virgins scatter'd, frighted with this sight,
A but the prominent windings of the flood.
All but Nausicaa fled; but she fast stood :
Pallas had put a boldness in her breast,
And in her fair limbs tender fear comprest.
And still she stood him, as resolved to know
What man he was; or out of what should grow
His strange repair to them. And here was he
Put to his wisdom; if her virgin knee
He should be bold, but kneeling, to embrace ;
Or keep aloof, and try with words of grace,
In humblest suppliance, if he might obtain
Some cover for his nakedness, and gain
Her grace to show and guide him to the town.
The last he best thought, to be worth his own,
In weighing both well; to keep still aloof,
And give with soft words his desires their proof;
Lest, pressing so near as to touch her knee,
He might incense her maiden modesty.
This fair and filed speech then shew'd this was he:
'Let me beseech, O queen, this truth of thee,
Are you of mortal, or the deified race?
If of the Gods, that th' ample heavens embrace,
I can resemble you to none above
So near as to the chaste-born birth of Jove,
The beamy Cynthia. Her you full present,
In grace of every God-like lineament,
Her goodly magnitude, and all th' address
You promise of her very perfectness.
If sprung of humans, that inhabit earth,
Thrice blest are both the authors of your birth;
Thrice blest your brothers, that in your deserts
Must, even to rapture, bear delighted hearts,
To see, so like the first trim of a tree,
Your form adorn a dance. But most blest he,
Of all that breathe, that hath the gift t'engage
Your bright neck in the yoke of marriage,
And deck his house with your commanding merit.
I have not seen a man of so much spirit,
Nor man, nor woman, I did ever see,
At all parts equal to the parts in thee.
T' enjoy your sight, doth admiration seize
My eyes, and apprehensive faculties.
Lately in Delos (with a charge of men
Arrived, that render'de most wretched then,
Now making me thus naked) I beheld
The burthen of a palm, whose issue swell'd
About Apollo's fane, and that put on
A grace like thee; for Earth had never none
Of all her sylvan issue so adorn'd.
Into amaze my very soul was turn'd,
To give it observation; as now thee
To view, O virgin, a stupidity
Past admiration strikes me, join'd with fear
To do a suppliant's due, and press so near,
As to embrace thy knees.
THE SONG THE SIRENS SUNG.
'Come here, thou worthy of a world of praise,
That dost so high the Grecian glory raise;
Ulysses! stay thy ship, and that song hear
That none pass'd ever but it bent his ear,
But left him ravish'd, and instructed more
By us, than any ever heard before.
For we know all things whatsoever were
In wide Troy labour'd; whatsoever there
The Grecians and the Trojans both sustain'd
By those high issues that the Gods ordain'd.
And whatsoever all the earth can show
T' inform a knowledge of desert, we know.
ODYSSEUS REVEALS HIMSELF TO HIS FATHER.
All this haste made not his staid faith so free
To trust his words; who said: 'If you are he,
Approve it by some sign.' 'This scar then see,'
Replied Ulysses, 'given me by the boar
Slain in Parnassus; I being sent before
By yours and by my honour'd mother's will,
To see your sire Autolycus fulfil
The gifts he vow'd at giving of my name.
I'll tell you, too, the trees, in goodly frame
Of this fair orchard, that I ask'd of you
Being yet a child, and follow'd for your show,
And name of every tree. You gave me then
Of fig-trees forty, apple bearers ten,
Pear-trees thirteen, and fifty ranks of vine;
Each one of which a season did confine
For his best eating. Not a grape did grow
That grew not there, and had his heavy brow
When Jove's fair daughters, the all-ripening Hours,
Gave timely date to it.' This charged the powers
Both of his knees and heart with such impression
Of sudden comfort, that it gave possession
Of all to trance; the signs were all so true;
And did the love that gave them so renew.
He cast his arms about his son and sunk,
The circle slipping to his feet; so shrunk
Were all his age's forces with the fire
Of his young love rekindled. The old sire
The son took up quite lifeless. But his breath
Again respiring, and his soul from death
His body's powers recovering, out he cried,
And said: 'O Jupiter! I now have tried
That still there live in heaven remembering Gods
Of men that serve them; though the periods
They set on their appearances are long
In best men's sufferings, yet as sure as strong
They are in comforts; be their strange delays
Extended never so from days to days.
Yet see the short joys or the soon-fix'd fears
Of helps withheld by them so many years:
For if the wooers now have paid the pain
Due to their impious pleasures, now again
Extreme fear takes me, lest we straight shall scc
The Ithacensians here in mutiny;
Their messengers dispatch'd to win to friend
The Cephallenian cities.'
[MICHAEL DRAYTON was born at Hartshull in Warwickshire about the year 1563. He died on the 23rd of December, 1631, and lies buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1591 he published The Harmony of the Church, which was for some unknown reason refused a licence, and has never been reprinted till recently. It was followed by Idea and The Pastorals, 1593; Mortimeriados (the Barons' Wars), 1595; The Heroical Epistles (one had been separately printed 1598); The Owl, 1604; Legends of Cromwell and others, 1607-1613; Polyolbion (first eighteen books 1612, whole 1622); The Battle of Agincourt, 1626; besides minor works at intervals.]
The sentence which Hazlitt allots to Drayton is perhaps one of the most felicitous examples of short metaphorical criticism. 'His mind,' says the critic, 'is a rich marly soil that produces an abundant harvest and repays the husbandman's toil; but few flaunting flowers, the garden's pride, grow in it, nor any poisonous weeds.' Such figurative estimates must indeed always be in some respects unsatisfactory, yet in this there is but little of inadequac It is exceedingly uncommon for the reader to be transported by anything that he meets with in the author of the Polyolbion. Drayton's jewels five words long are of the rarest, and their sparkle when they do occur is not of the brightest or most enchanting lustre. But considering his enormous volume, he is a poet of surprisingly high merit. Although he has written some fifty or sixty thousand lines, the bulk of them on subjects not too favourable to poetical treatment, he has yet succeeded in giving to the whole an unmistakeably poetical flavour, and in maintaining that flavour throughout. The variety of his work, and at the same time the unfailing touch by which he lifts that work, not indeed into the highest regions of poetry, but far above its lower confines, are his most remarkable characteristics. The Polyolbion, the Heroical Epistles, the Odes, the Ballad of Agincourt, and the Nymphidia are strikingly unlike each other in the qualities required for suc
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