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The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

The touch of unreal in these fancies was played upon by Sir Walter Raleigh in this—

THE NYMPH'S REPLY TO THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD.

If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.

But time drives flocks from field to fold,
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold;
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complains of cares to come.

Sweet sun, when thou look'st on,
Pray her regard my moan!
Sweet birds, when you sing to her,
To yield some pity woo her!
Sweet flowers that she treads on,

Tell her, her beauty deads one.
And if in life her love she nil agree me,2
Pray her, before I die she will come see me.

Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies,
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten,-
In folly ripe, in season rotten.

Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,
Thy coral clasps and amber studs,-
All these in me no means can move

To come to thee and be thy love.

But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need ;
Then those delights my mind might move
To live with thee and be thy love,

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Of the great beauty of Marlowe's "Hero and Leander," finished by George Chapman, as well as of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," illustrations will be given when we discuss the longer English Poems. The next piece is a pastoral by another of the dramatists who wrote plays before Shakespeare was known, Thomas Lodge, a Roman Catholic, who afterwards practised as a physician, and where all were singing he did not want patients because he had proved himself to be a poet. The piece was printed in 1600 in "England's Helicon."

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. (From the Chandos Portrait.)

From the songs in the plays of Shakespeare let us take one or two to blend his music with that of his friends. This is from the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," one of his earliest comedies :

SILVIA.

Who is Silvia? What is she,

That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she,

The heavens such grace did lend her, That she might admiréd be.

Is she kind as she is fair,

For beauty lives with kindness? Love doth to her eyes repair,

To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there. Then to Silvia let us sing,

That Silvia is excelling;

She excels each mortal thing,

Upon the dull earth dwelling: To her let us garlands bring.

This is from "Much Ado about Nothing: "

SIGH NO MORE.

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

To one thing constant never:

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2 Nil, will not. The First-English "willan," to will, had its nega tive in "nyllan."

Not daintier than this, in its half artific is the famous little pastoral written by the "mighty line." Christopher Mar of like age with Shakespeare, but coming University to London, he leapt while yet y fame as a dramatist, and raised the drai point beyond which Shakespeare only coul it. It was the genius of Marlowe that es blank verse as the measure of English poetry, leaving only to Shakespeare ti of developing the full variety of force and that is within the compass of its music. Marlowe's song, from which Shakespeare, "Merry Wives of Windsor," made Sir Hugh i waiting for his adversary, sing a line or two:

"By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals."

THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD. Come live with me, and be my love; And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dales and fields, Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,

Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals.

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Shakespeare's Sonnets were first described in his own time-by Francis Meres in 1598-as his 'sugared sonnets among his private friends." They were first published in 1609, seven years before his death, and dedicated by Thomas Thorpe, the bookseller, to "Mr. W. H.," in words that have sent critics upon many a wild-goose chase. The first description of them was the best, and the best modern editor of Shakespeare, Alexander Dyce, said in the account of Shakespeare prefixed in 1866 to a second edition of his works, "For my own part repeated perusals of the Sonnets have well nigh convinced me that most of them were composed in an assumed character on different subjects, and at different times, for the amusement, if not at the suggestion of the author's intimate associates (hence described by Meres as his sugred sonnets among his private friends '); and though I would not deny that one or two of them reflect his genuine feelings, I contend that allusions scattered through the whole series are not to be hastily referred to the personal circumstances of Shakespeare." This is wholesome truth, and accords with what we have seen of the nature of the sonnet, and the original use of it. As to their structure, Shakespeare's sonnets are not technically true sonnets, but fourteen-lined poems of exquisite variety and beauty, each consisting of three quatrains of alternate rhyme and a closing couplet. These are examples :

TIME.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity once in the main of light,1

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned, Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And time that gave, doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

THE SECOND SELF.

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,

It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,

No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.

But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read,
Self so self-loving were iniquity.

'Tis thee (myself) that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

ENVY.

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure, unstained prime.
Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days,
Either not assailed, or victor being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged:

If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.3

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1 In the main of light. In the full flood of light. Main (FirstEnglish "mægen "), strength, force, energy. Thus, in the "Merchant of Venice," Act v. :—

"A substitute shines brightly as a king
Until a king be by, and then his state
Empties itself as doth an inland brook
Into the main of waters."

Either, pronounced as one syllable "ei'er." 8 Once, own.

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O, if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse :
But let your love even with my life decay;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.

FIRM LOVE.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove :

O, no; it is an ever-fixéd mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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Michael Drayton and Samuel Daniel were two poets alike in age, one born in 1562, the other in 1563. Each in his own way, they ran as poets somewhat parallel to one another. Drayton, a Warwickshire man, produced in 1591 a volume of sacred poetry, "The Harmonie of the Church." In 1592 Daniel, a Devonshire man, published some love-poems, and one founded on history, "Delia, containing certain Sonnets, with the Complaint of Rosamond." In 1593 Drayton published love-poems as Idea," followed in 1594 by one founded on history, 'Matilda," with "Idea's Mirrour, Amours in Quatorzains." In 1595 Daniel produced the first four books of a historical poem, in octave rhyme, taking one of our most memorable civil wars for its theme, "The Civille Warres betweene the Two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke;" chosen because, in the last years of the reign of the Maiden Queen, there was present to men's minds a possibility of civil war after her death to settle the succession to her throne. In the very next year, 1596, Drayton produced his "Mortimeriados," the first instalment of a historical poem, also in octave rhyme, on our other famous civil war, "The Lamentable Civil Wars of Edward the Second and the Barons," a poem commonly known as "the Barons' Wars." Both poets went on with their poems while Elizabeth lived, but after her death, and the peaceful accession of James I., into whose reign their lives passed, they left them unfinished, because their theme, Civil War, had lost its living interest. In 1598 Drayton founded upon Ovid's "Heroides," a book of similar poetical epistles, "England's Heroical Epistles," in which the writers were persons of whose love there is record in English History, and he opened with fair Rosamond. Daniel, who had produced in 1597 the Tragedy of Philotas, published in 1599 "Musophilus," a poem in defence of learning and poetry, which he dedicated to Fulke

Even, pronounced "e'en."