The Golden Treasury | Page 3

Youthfulness. Poetry gives treasures "more golden than
gold," leading us in higher and healthier ways than those of the world,
and interpreting to us the lessons of Nature. But she speaks best for
herself. Her true accents, if the plan has been executed with success,

may be heard throughout the following pages:-wherever the Poets of
England are honoured, wherever the dominant language of the world is
spoken, it is hoped that they will find fit audience.
F. T. PALGRAVE.
THE GOLDEN TREASURY.
FIRST BOOK.
SUMMARY.
The 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:--nor less, the
limitation of subject to the many phases of one passion, which then
characterised 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 perfect as on the first day.

0. SPRING.
Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant king; Then blooms each
thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds
do sing,
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play,
the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune their merry lay,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet,
old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet,

Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet Spring!
T. NASH.
2. SUMMONS TO LOVE.
Phoebus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red:

Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed
That she may thy
career with roses spread:
The nightingales thy coming eachwhere
sing:
Make an eternal spring!
Give life to this dark world which
lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou
wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl
thy temples fair:
Chase hence the ugly night
Which serves but to
make dear thy glorious light.
--This is that happy morn,
That day, long wishéd day
Of all my life
so dark,
(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn
And fates not hope
betray),
Which, purely white, deserves
An everlasting diamond
should it mark.
This is the morn should bring unto this grove
My
Love, to hear and recompense my love.
Fair King, who all preserves,

But show thy blushing beams,
And thou two sweeter eyes
Shalt
see than those which by Penéus' streams
Did once thy heart surprize.


Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise:
If that ye winds would
hear
A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre,
Your furious chiding
stay;
Let Zephyr only breathe
And with her tresses play.
--The
winds all silent are,
And Phoebus in his chair
Ensaffroning sea and
air
Makes vanish every star:
Night like a drunkard reels
Beyond
the hills, to shun his flaming wheels:
The fields with flowers are
deck'd in every hue,
The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue;

Here is the pleasant place--
And nothing wanting is, save She, alas.
WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.
3. TIME AND LOVE.
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of
out-worn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage.
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom
of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing
store with loss, and loss with store.
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself
confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate--
That
Time will come and take my Love away.
--This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have
that which it fears to lose.
W. SHAKESPEARE.
4.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality
o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,

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