the personification of hypocrisy ; and, by his black arts, he sends such dreams to the good Knight as make him doubt the worth of the lady whom he has been trying to aid.

Thus ends the first canto, of nearly sixty stanzas, or over five hundred lines. After eleven other cantos, similarly describing the wonderful adventures of the Knight and lady, the First Book ends with their betrothal,—a union of" Holiness" and "Truth." The succeeding five books tell the stories of similar services rendered to the "Faerie Queene."]

SONNET

To the Right Noble and Valorous Knight,

SIR WALTER RALEIGH,

Lord Wardein of the Stanneryes, and Lieftenaunt of Cornewaile

To thee that art the Sommers Nightingale,

Thy soveraigne Goddesses most deare delight,
Why doe I send this rusticke madrigale,

That may thy tunefull eare unseason quite?

Thou onely fit this argument to write,

In whose high thoughts Pleasure hath built her bowre,
And dainty Love learnd sweetly to endite.

My rimes I know unsavory and sowre,

To taste the streames, that, like a golden showre,
Flow from thy fruitfull head, of thy Loves praise;
Fitter perhaps to thunder martiall stowre,
When so thee list thy loftie Muse to raise :

Yet, till that thou thy poeme wilt make knowne,

Let thy faire Cinthias praises be thus rudely showne.

5

ΙΟ

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

The glory of Shakespeare rests chiefly upon his achievements as dramatist, and an account of his life and works does not, therefore, come within the scope of this book. But to send forth a volume of representative English poems which does not include some production of the greatest poet of our tongue would be an anomaly. Since it would be impossible to print here one of Shakespeare's plays, it has seemed wise to let the poet speak through a few of the best of his sonnets. They were written probably between 1593 and 1603, most of them about 1594-1595.

FIVE SONNETS

XVIII

SHALL I compare thee to a Sommers day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough windes do shake the darling buds of Maie,
And Sommers lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every faire from faire sometime declines,
By chance, or natures changing course, untrim'd;
But thy eternall Sommer shall not fade,
Nor loose possession of that faire thou ow'st ;
Nor shall Death brag thou wandr'st in his shade,
When in eternall lines to time thou grow'st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

XXIX

When in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes,

I all alone beweepe my outcast state,

And trouble deafe Heaven with my bootlesse cries,
And looke upon myselfe, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur'd like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this mans art, and that mans skope
With what I most injoy contented least ;
Yet in these thoughts myselfe almost despising,

5

ΤΟ

15

20

Haplye I thinke on thee, — and then my state
(Like to the larke at breake of daye arising
From sullen earth) sings himns at heavens gate;

For thy sweet love remembred, such welth brings,
That then I skorne to change my state with Kings.

XXX

When to the Sessions of sweet silent thought

I sommon up remembrance of things past,

25

30

I sigh the lacke of many a thing I sought,

And

And with old woes now waile my deare times waste :
Then can I drowne an eye unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
weepe afresh loves long-since canceld woe,

35

And mone the expence of many a vannisht sight.
Then can I greeve at greevances foregon,

And heavily from woe to woe tell ore
The sad account of fore-bemonèd mone,
Which I new pay as if not payd before.

40

But if the while I thinke on thee, deare friend,
All losses are restord, and sorrowes end.

LXXIII

That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, doe hange
Upon those boughes which shake against the could
Bare ruin'd quirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after Sunset fadeth in the West,
Which by and by blacke night doth take away,
Deaths second selfe, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lye,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nurrisht by.

45

50

This thou percev'st, which makes thy love more strong, 55 To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

E

CVI

When in the Chronicle of wasted time
I see discriptions of the fairest wights,
And beautie making beautifull old rime,

In praise of Ladies dead, and lovely Knights;
Then, in the blazon of sweet beauties best,
Of hand, of foote, of lip, of eye, of brow,
I see their antique Pen would have exprest
Even such a beauty as you maister now.
So all their praises are but prophesies
Of this our time, all you prefiguring;
And, for they look'd but with devining eyes,
They had not skill enough your worth to sing:
For we, which now behold these present days,
Have eyes to wonder, but lack toungs to praise.

60

65

70

CHAPTER V

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

1. THE PERIOD OF PURITAN INFLUENCE

By the "Elizabethan age" literary historians commonly understand not only the years which comprise the reign of Elizabeth, but also those of the first two Stuarts and even of the Commonwealth, that is, down to 1660. We are undoubtedly justified in conceiving the boundaries of the era as extending beyond the good queen's death, in 1603, for at that time much of Shakespeare's best work was as yet unaccomplished, while Ben Jonson, who must certainly be classed as an Elizabethan, had been writing only a very few years. But the later, or post-Elizabethan, literature soon showed signs of decadence; the spirit which had animated it was failing; and by the time that the young Milton had written his first lyrics the old order had well-nigh passed.

The age now beginning differed from its predecessor in many respects, but chiefly in that it was marked by a great civil and religious conflict. This is the period of the Puritan revolution. It was short and its limits cannot be precisely defined; but literary eras are independent of arbitrary or external bounds. Some Elizabethan poets, for instance, lived on and wrote up to the time of the Restoration; and the greatest of Puritans, Milton and Bunyan, produced their most characteristic work after their "period" had passed away and the excesses of the profligate Restoration had begun. There is no doubt, however, that from about 1625 to 1660, England, as a whole, was stirred by emotions and inspired by ideals far different from those which had held sway during the years of the Tudor Elizabeth. Characteristic tendencies not to be confounded with those that followed or preceded — marked this period of Puritan influence.

In many ways the Puritan movement affected the life of the nation. "England,” says Green, “became the people of a book, and that book was the Bible." For fifty years the religious side of life had been gaining in prominence. Theological discussion was rife. Men were developing, spiritually and intellectually. Demands for larger freedom, civil and religious, grew more vehement year by year. These demands James I and his son Charles I ignored or scornfully refused to grant.