Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour

Nor man nor boy
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy !
Hence, in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither;

Can in a moment travel thither And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore,

Then, sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song !

And let the young lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound !
We, in thought, will join your throng
Ye that pipe and ye

that
Ye that through your hearts to-day

Feel the gladness of the May !
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind,
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be,
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering,

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves !

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway ;
I love the brooks which down their channels fret
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they ;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day

Is lovely yet ;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

W. Wordsworth

CCLXXXVIII

Vibrates in the memory
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed ;
And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

P. B. Shelley

NOTES

THI

- nor

Summary of Book First HE Elizabethan Poetry, as it is rather vaguely termed, forms

the substance of this Book, which contains pieces from Wyat under Henry VIII to Shakespeare midway through the reign of James I, and Drummond who carried on the early manner to a still later period. There is here a wide range of style ;from simplicity expressed in a language hardly yet broken in to verse, — through the pastoral fancies and Italian conceits of the strictly Elizabethan time, - - to the passionate reality of Shakespeare : yet a general uniformity of tone prevails. Few readers can fail to observe the natural sweetness of the verse, the single-hearted straightforwardness of the thoughts : – less, the limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then characterized our lyrical poetry, - unless when, as with Drummond and Shakespeare, the 'purple light of Love'is tempered by a spirit of sterner reflection.

It should be observed that this and the following Summaries apply in the main to the Collection here presented, in which (besides its restriction to Lyrical Poetry) a strictly representative or historical Anthology has not been aimed at. Great Excellence, in human art as in human character, has from the beginning of things been even more uniform than Mediocrity, by virtue of the closeness of its approach to Nature :--and so far as the standard of Excellence kept in view has been attained in this volume, a comparative absence of extreme or temporary phases in style, a similarity of tone and manner, will be found throughout :- something neither modern nor ancient, but true in all ages, and like the works of Creation, porfect as on the first day.

2

Page No.

II Rouse Memnon's mother : Awaken the Dawn from the

dark Earth and the clouds where she is resting. Au-
rora in the old mythology is mother of Memnon (the
East), and wife of Tithonus (the appearances of Earth
and Sky during the last hours of Night). She leaves
him every morning in renewed youth, to prepare the
way for Phoebus (the Sun), whilst Tithonus remains in
perpetual old age and grayness.
1. 27 by Peneus' strean : Phoebus loved the Nymph
Daphne, whom he met by the river Peneus in the vale
of Tempe. This legend expressed the attachment of
the Laurel (Daphne) to the Sun, under whose heat the
tree both fades and flourishes.
It has been thought worth while to explain these allu-
sions, because they illustrate the character of the Grecian
Mythology, which arose in the Personification of natural
phenomena, and was totally free from those de basing
and ludicrous ideas with which, through Roman and
later misunderstanding or perversion, it has been asso-

ciated. 3 II. 1 Amphion's lyre : He was said to have built the

walls of Thebes to the sound of his music.
1. 9 Night like a drunkard reels : Compare Romeo and
Juliet, Act II. Scene 3: ‘The gray-eyed morn smiles'
&c. It should be added, that three lines, which ap-
peared hopelessly misprinted, have been omitted in this

Poem. 4 Time's chest: in which he is figuratively supposed to

lay up past treasures. So in Troilus, Act III. Scene 3,
Time hath a wallet at his back' &c.
A fine example of the highwrought and conventional
Elizabethan Pastoralism, which it would be ludicrous to
criticise on the ground of the unshepherdlike or unreal
character of some images suggested. Stanza 6 was

IV

V