Michael Drayton- Collected Poetical Works

by Michael Drayton

  Watching the birds unto the same to win;

  Sees in a boat a fisher near at hand,

  Tugging his net full laden to the land,

  Keep off the fowl, whereat the other’s blood

  Chaf’d; from the place where secretly he stood

  Makes signs, and closely beck’neth him away,

  Shaketh his hand, as threat’ning if be stay,

  In the same stained with such natural grace,

  That rage was lively pictured in his face:

  Whilst that the other eagerly that wrought,

  Having his sense still settled on his draught

  More than before, beats, plunges, hales the cord,

  Nor hut one look, the other can afford.

  Baskins she wore, which of the sea did bear

  The pale green colour, which like waved were

  To that vast Neptune, of two colours mixt,

  Yet none could toll the difference was betwixt,

  With rocks of crystal lively that were set,

  Covering whose feet with many a curious fret,

  Where groves of coral, which not feeling weather,

  Their limber branches were so lapp’d together,

  As one enamour’d had of other been,

  Jealous the air t’ have intercourse between:

  ‘Mongst which clear amber jellied seem’d to be,

  Through whose transparence you might easily see

  The beds of pearl whereon the gum did sleep,

  Cockles, broad scallops, and their kind that keep

  The precious seed which of the waters come,

  Some yet but thriving, when as other some,

  More than the rest that strangely seem to swell,

  With the dear fruit that grew within the shell;

  Others again wide open there did yawn,

  And on the gravel spew’d their orient spawn:

  That he became amazed at her sight,

  Even as a man is troubled at the light,

  Newly awaked, and the white and red,

  With his eyes twinkling, gathered and fled:

  Like as a mirror to the Sun oppos’d,

  Within the margin equally enclos’d,

  That being moved, as the band directs,

  It at one instant taketh and reflects:

  For the affection by the violent heat,

  Forming it, passion taketh up the seat

  In the full heart, whereby the joy or fear,

  That it receives either by th’ eye or ear,

  Still as the object altereth the mood,

  Either attracts, or forceth from the blood i

  That from the chief part violently sent,

  In either kind thereby is vehement.

  “Whilst the sad shepherd in this woful plight

  Perplex’d, the goddess with a longing sight

  Him now beheld; for worshipped by men,

  The heavenly powers so likewise love agen

  To show themselves, and make their glories known!

  And one day marking when he was alone,

  Unto him coming, mildly him bespake:

  Quoth she,’ Know, shepherd, only for thy sake,

  I first chose Latmus, as the only place

  Of my abode, and have refus’d to grace

  My Menalus, well known in every coast,

  To be the mount that once I loved most:

  And sine? alone of wretched mortals, thou

  Hast labour’d first my wand’ring course to know;

  To times succeeding thou alone shalt be,

  By whom my motion shall be taught,’ quoth she,

  ‘For those first simple that my face did mark,

  In the full brightness suddenly made dark.

  Ere knowledge did the cause thereof disclose,

  To be enchanted long did me suppose: — .

  With sounding brass and all the while did ply,

  The incantation thereby to untie.

  “‘But to our purpose, when our mother went,

  The bright Latona, (and her womb distent)

  With the great burden that by Jove she bare,

  Me and my brother, the great thunderer’s care:

  Whom floating Delos wand*ring in the main.

  From jealous Juno hardly could contain:

  Then much distress’d, and ip a hard estate,

  Coeus, fair daughter by our stepdame’s hate,

  Betwixt a laurel and an olive-tree,

  Into the world did bring the Sun and me.

  When I was born (as I have heard her say)

  Nature alone did rest her on that day:

  In Jove’s high house the gods assembled dll,

  To whom he held a sumptuous festival;

  The well wherein my mother bath’d me first,

  Hath that high virtue, that he shall not thirst,

  Thereof that drinks, and hath the pain appeas’d

  Of th’ inward griev’d, amt outwardly diseas’d:

  And being young, the gods that haunt the deep,

  Stealing to kiss me softly laid to sleep;

  And having felt the sweetness of my breath,

  Missing me, mourn’d, and languished to death.

  I am the rectress of this globe below,

  And with my course the sea doth ebb and flow,

  When from aloft thy beams I oblique cast,

  Straightways it ebbs, and floweth then as fast;

  Down want again my motion when I make,

  Twice doth it swell, twice every day doth slake;

  Sooner or later shifting of the tide

  As far or near my wand’ring course doth guide.

  “‘That kindly moisture that doth life maintain,

  In every creature proves how I do reign

  In fluxive humour, which is ever found,

  As l do wane or wax up to my round;

  Those fruitful trees of victory and peace#

  The palm and olive, still with my increase

  Shoot forth new branches: and to tell my power,

  As my great brother, so have I a flower

  To me peculiar, that doth ope rind close,

  When as I rise, and when I me repose.

  No less than these that green and living be,

  The precious gems do sympathize with me:

  As most that stone that doth the name derive

  From me, with me that lesseneth or doth thrive,

  Dark’neth and shineth, as I do, her queen,

  And as in these, in beasts my power is seen.

  As he whose grim face all the lesser fears,

  The cruel panther, on his shoulder bears

  A spot that daily changeth as I do.

  And as that creature me affecteth too,

  It whose deep craft scarce any creature can,

  Seeming with reason to divide with man,

  The nimble babion mourning all the time,

  Nor eats betwixt my waning and my prime.

  The spotted cat, whose sharp and subtil sight

  Pierceth the vapour of the blackest night,

  My want and fulness in her eye doth find.

  So great am I and powerful in that kind.

  As those great burghers of the forest wild,

  The hart, the goat, and he that slew the child

  Of wanton Mirrah, in their strength do know

  The due observance nature doth me owe.

  And if thou think me heavenly not to he,

  That in my face thou often seem’st to see

  A paleness, where those other in the sky

  Appear so purely glorious in thine eye:

  Those freckles thou supposest me disgrace,

  Are those pure parts that in my lovely face,

  By their so much tenuity do slight,

  My brother’s beams assisting me with light,

  And keep that clearness as doth me behove.

  Of that pure Heaven me set wherein to move.

  My least spot seen unto the Earth so near,

/>   Wherefore that compass that doth oft appeal

  About my body, is the dampy mist,

  From Earth arising, striving to resist

  The rays my full orb plenteously projects

  On the gross cloud, whose thickness It reflects,

  And mine own light about myself doth fling

  In equal parts, in fashion of a ring;

  For near’st to mortals though my state l keep,

  Yet not the colour of the troubled deep,

  Those spots supposed, nor the fogs that rink

  From the dull Earth, me any whit agrize;

  Whose perfect beauty no way can endure,

  But what like me is excellently pure;

  For moist and cold although I do respire,

  Yet in myself had I not genuine fire,

  When tire gross Earth divided bath the Space

  Betwixt the full orb and my brother’s face.

  Though I confess much lessen’d be my light,

  I should be taken utterly from right:

  And for I so irregularly go,

  Therein wise Nature most of aft doth show

  Her searchless judgment: for did I in all

  Keep on in that way, which star-gazers call

  The line ecliptic, as my glorious brother

  Doth in his course, one opposite to other;

  Twice every month, th’ eclipses of our light

  Poor mortals should prodigiously affright;

  Yet by proportion certainly I move,

  In rule of number, and the most I love

  That which you call full, that most perfect seven

  Of three and four made, which for odd and even

  Are male and female, which by mixture frame,

  It most mysterious, that as mine I claim;

  Quarter’d thereby, first of which seven my prime,

  The second seven accomplished the time

  Unto my fulness, in the third I range

  Less’ning again, the fourth then to my change:

  The which four sevens the eight and twenty make.

  Through the bright Circle of the zodiac

  In which I pass, whose quarters do appear

  As the four seasons of my brother’s year.

  First in my birth am moisten’d as his spring;

  Hot as the summer, he illumining

  My orb, the second; my third quarter dry,

  As is his autumn; when from him I fly,

  Depriv’d his bright beams, and as waxing old,

  Lastly, my wane is as his winter cold.’

  “Whereat she paus’d; who all the while she spake,

  The hustling winds their murmur often brake;

  And being silent seemed yet to stay,

  To listen if she had ought else to say.

  When now the while much troubled was his thought,

  Ala! her fair speech so craftily had caught

  Him, that the spirits soon shaking off the Ibid

  Of the gross flesh, and hating her abode;

  Being thoroughly heated in these amorous fires,

  Wholly transported with the dear desires

  Of her embraces: for the living soul,

  Being individual, uniform and whole,

  By her unwearied faculties doth find

  That which the flesh of duller earth by kind

  Not apprehends, and by her function makes

  Good her own state; Endymion now forsakes

  All the delights that shepherds do prefer,

  And sets his mind so generally on her,

  That all neglected to the groves and springs,

  He follows Phoebe, that him safely brings

  (As their great queen) unto the nymphish bowers,

  Wherein clear rivers beautified with flowers,

  The silver Naides bathe them in the brack,

  Sometime with her the sea-horse be doth back,

  Amongst the blue Nereides; and when

  Weary of waters, goddess-like agen,

  She the high mountains actively assays,

  And there amongst the light Oriades,

  That ride the swift roes, Phoebe doth resort;

  Sometime amongst those that with them comport,

  The Hamadriades doth the woods frequent;

  And there she stays not, but incontinent,

  Calls down the dragons that her chariot draw,

  And with Endymion pleased that she saw,

  Mounteth thereon, in twinkling of an eye,

  Stripping the winds, beholding from the sky

  The Garth in roundness of a perfect ball,

  Which as a point but of this mighty all,

  Wise Nature fix’d, that permanent doth stay,

  Whereas the spheres by a diurnal sway

  Of the first Mover carried are about

  And how the several elements throughout,

  Strongly infolded, and the vast air spread

  In sundry regions, ip the which are bred

  Those strange impressions often that appear

  To fearful mortals, and the causes there,

  And light’ned by her piercing beams, he sees

  The powerful planets, how in their degrees,

  In their due seasons they do fall and rise:

  And how the signs in their triplicities

  Be sympathising in their trine consents,

  With whose inferior forming elements,

  From which our bodies the complexions take,

  Natures and number: strongly and do make

  Our dispositions like them, and on Earth

  The power the Heavens have over mortal birth,

  That their effects which men call fortune, are

  As is that good or inauspicious star,

  Which at the frail nativity doth reign.

  Yet here her love could Phoebe not contain,

  And knowledge him so strongly doth inspire,

  That in most plenty, more he doth desire;

  Raising him up to those excelling sights,

  The glorious Heaven, where all the fixed lights,

  Whose images suppos’d to be therein,

  Are fram’d of stars, whose names did first begin

  By those wise ancients, not to stellify

  The first world’s herpes only, but imply

  To teach their courses, for distinguished

  In constellations, a delight flrst bred

  In slothful man, into the same to look,

  That from those figures nomination took,

  Which they resembled her on Earth below,

  And the bright Phoebe subtilIy doth know

  The heavenly motions high her orb above,

  As well as those that under her do move.

  For with long titles do we her invest,

  So these great three most powerful of the rest,

  Phoebe, Diana, Hecate, do tell.

  Her sovereignty in Heaven, in Earth and Hell;

  And wise Apollo, that doth likewise send

  Her his pure beams with them doth likewise send

  His wondrous knowledge, for that god most bright,

  King of the planets, fountain of the light:

  That seeth all things, will have her to see,

  So far as where the sacred angels he.

  Those hierarchies that Jove’s great will supply,

  Whose orders formed in triplicity,

  Holding their place? by the treble trine,

  Make up that holy theologic nine:

  Thrones, cherubin, and seraphin that rise,

  As the first three, when principalities,

  With dominations, potestates are plac’d

  The second; and the ephionian last,

  Which virtues, angels, and archangels be.

  “Thus yonder man that in the moon you see,

  Rapt up from Latmus, thus she doth prefer,

  And goes about continually with her:

  Over the world that every month doth look,

  And in the same there’s sc
arce that secret nook

  That he surveys not, and the places hidden

  Whence simple truth and candle-light forbidden

  Dare not approach, he peepeth with his light;

  Whereas suspicious Policy by night

  Consults with Murder, Baseness at their hand,

  Armed to act whatever they command,

  With guilty conscience and intent so foul,

  That oft they start at whooping of an owl,

  And slily peering at a little pore,

  See one sometimes content to keep the door:

  One would not think the bawd that did not know,

  Such a brave body could descend so low.

  And the base churl, the Sun that dare not trust,

  With his old gold, yet smelling it doth rust,

  Lays it abroad, but locks himself within

  Three doubled locks, or ere he dare begin

  To ope his bags, and being sure of all;

  Else, yet therewith dare scarcely trust the wall:

  And with a candle in a filthy stick,

  The grease not fully covering the wick,

  Pores o’er his base god, forth a flame that fries,

  Almost as dim as his foul bleared eyes:

  Yet like to a great murderer, that gave

  Some slight reward unto some bloody knave,

  To kill, the second secretly doth slay,

  Fearing lest he the former should betray:

  He the poor candle murd’reth ere burnt not,

  Because that he the secresy doth doubt;

  And oftentimes the Mooned-man out spies

  The eve-dropper, and circumspectly eyes

  The thief and lover, ‘specially which two

  With night and darkness have the most to do.

  And not long since, besides this, did behold

  Some of you here, when you should tend your fold,

  A nights were wenching: thus be me doth tell,”

  With that, they all in such a laughter fell,

  That the field rang: when from a village near

  The watchful cock crew, and with notes full clear

  The early lark soon summoned the day,

  When they departed every one their way.

  BALLAD OF AGINCOURT

  The Battle of Agincourt, 15th-century miniature

  THE BALLAD OF AGINCOURT

  TO THE CAMBRO-BRITANS AND THEIR HARPE, HIS BALLAD OF AGINCOVRT

  Faire stood the Wind for France,

  When we our Sayles aduance,

  Nor now to proue our chance,

  Longer will tarry;

  But putting to the Mayne,

  At Kaux, the Mouth of Sene,

  With all his Martiall Trayne,

  Landed King HARRY.

  And taking many a Fort,

  Furnish’d in Warlike sort, 10

  Marcheth tow’rds Agincourt,

  In happy howre;