Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes; Fountain-heads and pathless groves, These are the sounds we feed upon: Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley: (1) Places which pale passion loves. Beaumont, while writing this verse, perhaps the finest in the poem, probably had in his memory that of Marlowe, in his description of Tamburlaine : Pale of complexion, wrought in him with passion. (2) Lovely Melancholy. Tradition has given these verses to Beaumont, though they appeared for the first time in a play of Fletcher's after the death of his friend. In all probability Beaumont had partly sketched the play, and left the verses to be inserted. I cannot help thinking that a couplet has been lost after the words "bats and owls." It is true the four verses ending with those words might be made to belong to the preceding four, as among the things "welcomed;" but the junction would be forced, and the modulation injured. They may remain, too, where they are, as combining to suggest the "sounds" which the melancholy man feeds upon "fountain-heads" being audible, " groves whispering, and the "moonlight walks" being attended by the hooting "owl." They also modulate beautifully in this case. Yet these intimations themselves appear a little forced; whereas, supposing a couplet to be supplied, there would be a distinct reference to melancholy sights, as well as sounds. The conclusion is divine. Indeed the whole poem, as Hazlitt says, is "the perfection of this kind of writing.' Orpheus might have hung it, like a pearl, in the ear of Proserpina. It has naturally been thought to have suggested the Penseroso to Milton, and is more than worthy to have done so; for fine as that is, it is still finer. It is the concentration of a hundred melancholies. Sir Walter Scott, in one of his biographical works, hardly with the accustomed gallantry and good-nature of the great novelist, contrasted it with the "melo-dramatic" abstractions of Mrs. Radclyffe (then living). He might surely, with more justice, have opposed it to the diffuseness and conventional phraseology of "novels in verse." A SATYR PRESENTS A BASKET OF FRUIT TO THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS. BY FLETCHER. Here be grapes whose lusty blood Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown Deign, O fairest fair! to take them. For these black-eyed Dryope Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red, Here be berries for a queen, These are of that luscious meat The great god Pan himself doth eat! I freely offer; and cre long Will bring you more, more sweet and strong; Lest the great Pan do awake, (3) Some be red-some be green. This verse calls to mind a beautiful one of Chaucer, in his description of a grove in spring In which were oakès great, straight as a line, Coleridge was fond of repeating it. (*) That sleeping lies, &c. Pan was not to be waked too soon with impunity. Οὐ θέμις, ὦ ποιμάν, τὸ μεσαμβρινὸν, οὐ θέμις ἄμμιν Καὶ οἱ ἀεὶ δριμεῖα χολὰ ποτὶ ῥινὶ καθῆται. -Theocritus, Idyll. i. v. 15. No, shepherd, no; we must not pipe at noon : With quivering nostril. What a true picture of the half-goat divinity! A SPOT FOR LOVE-TALES. Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells; MORNING. See, the day begins to break, And the light shoots like a streak I have departed from my plan for once, to introduce this very small extract, partly for the sake of its beauty, partly to show the student that great poets do not confine their pleasant descriptions to images or feelings pleasing in the commoner sense of the word, but include such as, while seeming to contradict, harmonize with them, upon principles of truth, and of a genial and strenuous sympathy. The "subtle streak of fire" is obviously beautiful, but the addition of the cold wind is a truth welcome to those only who have strength as well as delicacy of apprehension,—or rather, that healthy delicacy which arises from the strength. Sweet and wholesome, and to be welcomed, is the chill breath of morning. There is a fine epithet for this kind of dawn in the elder Marston's Antonio and Melida :- Is not yon gleam the shuddering morn, that flakes THE POWER OF LOVE. Hear, ye ladies that despise What the mighty Love has done; Fear examples and be wise: Fair Calisto was a nun; |