upon the general thought-storehouse of the Italianate sonneteers: time and the transitoriness of beauty, the lover's extremes, the Platonic ideas of soul-functions and of love-madness, the phoenix and Icarus and all the classic gods, engage his fancy first or last; and no sonnet trifler has been more attracted by the great theme of immortality in verse than he. When honouring Idea in the favourite mode he cries 66 'Queens hereafter shall be glad to live Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise." A late writer holds that years have falsified this prophecy. It is true that Lamb valued Drayton chiefly as the panegyrist of his native earth, and we would hardly venture to predict the future of our sonneteer; but the fact remains that now three hundred years after his time, his lifelong devotion to the prototype of Idea constitutes, as he conventionally asserted it would, his most valid claim to interest, and that the sonnets where this love has found most potent expression mount the nearest to the true note of immortality. TO THE READER OF THESE SONNETS INTO these loves who but for passion looks, No far-fetched sigh shall ever wound my breast; My verse is the true image of my mind, IDEA I LIKE an adventurous sea-farer am I, How far he sailed, what countries he had seen, As how the pole to every place was reared, What capes he doubled, of what continent, The gulfs and straits that strangely he had past, Where most becalmed, where with foul weather spent, And on what rocks in peril to be cast: Thus in my love, time calls me to relate My tedious travels and oft-varying fate. II My heart was slain, and none but you and I; Who should I think the murder should commit? It slew itself; the verdict on the view But O see, see, we need inquire no further! Upon your lips the scarlet drops are found, And in your eye the boy that did the murder, Your cheeks yet pale since first he gave the wound! By this I see, however things be past, Yet heaven will still have murder out at last. III TAKING my pen, with words to cast my woe, The reck'nings rise to millions of despairs. And thus mine eyes a debtor to thine eye, |