SONNET LI. CARE-CHARMER Sleep, son of the sable Night; SONNET LV. NONE other fame mine unambitious Muse SONNET LII. LET others sing of knights and palladines, Which well the reach of their high wits records: SONNET LVI. UNHAPPY pen, and ill-accepted lines, But since she weighs them not, this rests for me; SONNET LIII. As to the Roman that would free his land, SONNET LVII. Lo here the impost of a faith entire, Which love doth pay, and her disdain extorts! Which tells the world how much my grief imports! SONNET LIV. LIKE as the lute delights, or else dislikes, Then judge the world her beauty gives the same. AN ODE. Now each creature joys the other, Whilst the greatest torch of Heaven, With bright rays warms Flora's lap; Making nights and days both even, Cheering plants with fresher sap; My field of flowers quite bereaven, Wants refresh of better hap. Let us neglected base Live still without thy grace, And th' use of th' ancient happy ages keep. Let's love-this life of ours Can make no truce with Time that all devours. Let's love-the Sun doth set, and rise again; But when as our short light With streams of milk, and honey dropp'd from trees; Comes once to set, it makes eternal night. Not that the Earth did gage TO THE ANGEL SPIRIT OF THE MOST EXCELLENT SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. That Israel's king may deign his own transform'd O bad that soul, which honour brought to rest Yet blessed grief that sweetness can impart, Time may bring forth what time hath yet suppress'd, Behold (O that thou were now to behold!) But since it hath no other scope to go, [flow, To thy great worth, which time to times enroll, O when from this account, this cast-up sum, And rest fair monuments of thy fair fame, Had divers so spar'd that life (but life) to frame Receive these hints; these obsequies receive; TO THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER...A DEFENCE OF RHYME. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, JAMES MONTAGUE, LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER; DEAN OF THE CHAPEL, AND ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S MOST HONOURABLE PRIVYCOUNCIL. ALTHOUGH you have, out of your proper store, A noble heart; as no man may have more, Yet, rev'rend lord, vouchsafe me leave to bring For whereas other sicknesses surprise This comes and steals us by degrees away; Besides, therewith we oftentimes have truce Yet that I know disquiets not your mind, Who knows the brittle metal of mankind; And have all comforts virtue can beget, And most the conscience of well-acted days: Which all those monuments which you have set On holy ground, to your perpetual praise, (As things best set) must ever testify And show the worth of noble Montague: And so long as the walls of piety 551 Stand, so long shall stand the memory of you. And how much bless'd and fortunate they were, That whensoever you shall come to make DEFENCE OF RHYME; AGAINST A PAMPHLET, ENTITLED OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY ; WHEREIN IS DEMONSTRATIVELY PROVED, THAT RHYME IS THE FITTEST HARMONY OF WORDS THAT COMPORTS WITH OUR LANGUAGE. ΤΟ ALL THE WORTHY LOVERS AND LEARNED PROFESSORS OF RHYME WITHIN HIS MAJESTY'S DOMINIONS. WORTHY GENTLEMEN, ABOUT a year since, upon the great reproach given the professors of rhyme, and the use hereof, I wrote a private letter, as a defence of my own undertakings in that kind, to a learned gentleman, a friend of mine, then in court. Which I did, rather to confirm myself in mine own courses, and to hold him from being wou from us, than with any desire to publish the same to the world. But now, seeing the times to promise a more regard to the present condition of our writings, in respect of our sovereign's' happy inclination this way; whereby we are rather to expect an encouragement to go on with what we do, than that any innovation should check us, with a show of what it would do in another kind, and yet do nothing but deprave: I have now given a greater body to the same argument; and here present it to your view, under the patronage of a noble King James I. earl, who in blood and nature is interested to take our part in this cause, with others who can. not, I know, but hold dear the monuments that have been left unto the world in this manner of composition; and who, I trust, will take in good part this my defence, if not as it is my particular, yet in respect of the cause I undertake, which I here invoke you all to protect. DEFENCE OF RHYME, ΤΟ WILLIAM HERBERT, EARL OF PEMBROKE. THE general custom and use of rhyme in this kingdom, noble lord, having been so long (as if from a grant of Nature) held unquestionable, made me to imagine that it lay altogether out of the way of contradiction, and was become so natural, as we should never have had a thought to cast it off into reproach, or be made to think that it ill became our language: but, now I see, when there is opposition made to all things in the world by words, we must now at length likewise fall to contend for words themselves, and make a question whether they be right or not. For we are told how that our measures go wrong, all rhyming is gross, vulgar, harbarous: which, if it be so, we have lost much labour to no purpose; and for my own particular, I cannot but blame the fortune of the times, and my own genius, that cast me upon so wrong a course, drawn with the current of custom and an unexamined example. Having been first encou raged and framed thereunto by your most worthy and honourable mother, and received the first notion for the formal ordering of those compositions at Wilton, which I must ever acknowledge to have been my best school, and thereof always am to hold a feeling and grateful memory. Afterward drawn further on by the well-liking and approbation of my worthy lord, the fosterer of me and my Muse, I adventured to bestow all my whole powers therein, perceiving it agree so well, both with the complexion of the times, and my own constitution, as I found not wherein I might better employ me: but yet now, upon the great discovery of these new measures threatening to overthrow the whole state of rhyme in this kingdom, I must either stand out to defend, or else be forced to forsake myself, and give over all; and though irresolution and a self distrust be the most apparent faults of my nature, and that the least check of reprehension, if it favour of reason, will as easily shake my resolution as any man's living; yet in this case I know not how I am grown more resolved, and before I sink, willing to examine what those powers of judgment are, that must bear me down, and beat me off from the station of my profession, which by the law of nature I am set to defend. And the rather, for that this detractor (whose commendable rhyme, albeit now himself an enemy best notice of his worth) is a man of fair parts, to rhyme, have given heretofore to the world the and good reputation, and therefore the reproach forcibly cast from such a hand, may throw down more at once than the labours of many shall in long time build up again, especially upon the slippery foundation of opinion, and the world's inconstancy, which knows not well what it would have, and Discit enim citius, meminitque libentinus illud And he who is thus become our unkind adversary, must pardon us if we be as jealous of our fame and reputation, as he is desirous of credit by his new old art, and must consider that we cannot, in a thing that concerns us so near, but have a feeling of the wrong done, wherein every rhymer in this universal island, as well as myself, stands interested; so that if his charity had equally drawn with his learning, he would have forborn to procure the envy of so powerful a number upon him, from whom he cannot but expect the return of a like measure of blame, and only have made way to his own grace, by the proof of his ability, without the disparaging of us, who would have been glad to have stood quietly by him, and perhaps commended his adventure, seeing that ever more of one science another may be born, and that these sallies, made out of the quarter of our set knowledges, are the gallant proffers only of attemptive spirits, and commendable, though they work no other effect than make a bravado: and I know it were indecens, et morosum nimis, alienæ industriæ modum ponere. We could well have allowed of his numbers, had he not disgraced our rhyme, which both custom and Nature doth most powerfully defend; custom that is before all law, nature that is above all art. Every language hath her proper number or measure fitted to use and delight, which, custom entertaining by the allowance of the ear, doth indenise and make natural. All verse is but a frame of words confined within certain measure, differing from the ordinary speech, and introduced, the better to express men's conceits, both for delight and memory; which frame of words, consisting of rythmus or metrum, number or measure, are disposed into divers fashions, according to the humour of the composer, and the set of the time: and these rhythmi, as Aristotle saith, are familiar amongst all nations, and è naturali et sponte fusa compositione. And they fall as naturally already in our language as ever art can make them, being such as the ear of itself doth marshal in their proper rooms, and they of themselves will not willingly be put out of rank, and that in such a verse as best comports with the nature of our language: and for our rhyme (which is an excellency added to this work of measure, and a harmony far happier than any proportion antiquity could ever show us) doth add more grace, and hath more of delight than ever bare numbers, howsoever they can be forced to run in our slow language, can possibly yield; which, whether it be deriv'd of rhythmus, or of romance, which were songs the Bards and Druids above rhymes used, and therefore were |