Collected Works of Michael Drayton

by Michael Drayton

  Then, sweet despair, awhile hold up thy head,

  Or all my hope for sorrow will be dead.

  IDEA, XXVII

  Is not love here as ’tis in other climes,

  And differeth it as do the several nations?

  Or hath it lost the virtue with the times,

  Or in this island alt’reth with the fashions?

  Or have our passions lesser power than theirs,

  Who had less art them lively to express?

  Is nature grown less powerful in their heirs,

  Or in our fathers did she more transgress?

  I am sure my sighs come from a heart as true

  As any man’s that memory can boast,

  And my respects and services to you,

  Equal with his that loves his mistress most.

  Or nature must be partial in my cause,

  Or only you do violate her laws.

  IDEA, XXVIII

  To such as say thy love I overprize,

  And do not stick to term my praises folly,

  Against these folks that think themselves so wise,

  I thus oppose my reason’s forces wholly:

  Though I give more than well affords my state,

  In which expense the most suppose me vain

  Which yields them nothing at the easiest rate,

  Yet at this price returns me treble gain;

  They value not, unskilful how to use,

  And I give much because I gain thereby.

  I that thus take or they that thus refuse,

  Whether are these deceivèd then, or I?

  In everything I hold this maxim still,

  The circumstance doth make it good or ill.

  TO THE SENSES

  IDEA, XXIX

  When conquering love did first my heart assail,

  Unto mine aid I summoned every sense,

  Doubting if that proud tyrant should prevail,

  My heart should suffer for mine eyes’ offence.

  But he with beauty first corrupted sight,

  My hearing bribed with her tongue’s harmony,

  My taste by her sweet lips drawn with delight,

  My smelling won with her breath’s spicery,

  But when my touching came to play his part,

  The king of senses, greater than the rest,

  He yields love up the keys unto my heart,

  And tells the others how they should be blest.

  And thus by those of whom I hoped for aid,

  To cruel love my soul was first betrayed.

  TO THE VESTALS

  IDEA, XXX

  Those priests which first the vestal fire begun,

  Which might be borrowed from no earthly flame,

  Devised a vessel to receive the sun,

  Being stedfastly opposèd to the same;

  Where with sweet wood laid curiously by art,

  On which the sun might by reflection beat,

  Receiving strength for every secret part,

  The fuel kindled with celestial heat.

  Thy blessèd eyes, the sun which lights this fire,

  My holy thoughts, they be the vestal flame,

  Thy precious odours be my chaste desires,

  My breast’s the vessel which includes the same;

  Thou art my Vesta, thou my goddess art,

  Thy hallowed temple only is my heart.

  TO THE CRITICS

  IDEA, XXXI

  Methinks I see some crooked mimic jeer,

  And tax my Muse with this fantastic grace;

  Turning my papers asks, “What have we here?”

  Making withal some filthy antic face.

  I fear no censure nor what thou canst say,

  Nor shall my spirit one jot of vigour lose.

  Think’st thou, my wit shall keep the packhorse way,

  That every dudgeon low invention goes?

  Since sonnets thus in bundles are imprest,

  And every drudge doth dull our satiate ear,

  Think’st thou my love shall in those rags be drest

  That every dowdy, every trull doth wear?

  Up to my pitch no common judgment flies;

  I scorn all earthly dung-bred scarabies.

  TO THE RIVER ANKOR

  IDEA, XXXII

  Our floods’ queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crowned,

  And stately Severn for her shore is praised;

  The crystal Trent for fords and fish renowned,

  And Avon’s fame to Albion’s cliff is raised.

  Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee;

  York many wonders of her Ouse can tell;

  The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be;

  And Kent will say her Medway doth excel.

  Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame;

  Our northern borders boast of Tweed’s fair flood;

  Our western parts extol their Wilis’ fame;

  And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.

  Arden’s sweet Ankor, let thy glory be,

  That fair Idea only lives by thee!

  TO IMAGINATION

  IDEA, XXXIII

  Whilst yet mine eyes do surfeit with delight,

  My woful heart imprisoned in my breast,

  Wisheth to be transformèd to my sight,

  That it like those by looking might be blest.

  But whilst mine eyes thus greedily do gaze,

  Finding their objects over-soon depart,

  These now the other’s happiness do praise,

  Wishing themselves that they had been my heart,

  That eyes were heart, or that the heart were eyes,

  As covetous the other’s use to have.

  But finding nature their request denies,

  This to each other mutually they crave;

  That since the one cannot the other be,

  That eyes could think of that my heart could see.

  TO ADMIRATION

  IDEA, XXXIV

  Marvel not, love, though I thy power admire,

  Ravished a world beyond the farthest thought,

  And knowing more than ever hath been taught,

  That I am only starved in my desire.

  Marvel not, love, though I thy power admire,

  Aiming at things exceeding all perfection,

  To wisdom’s self to minister direction,

  That I am only starved in my desire.

  Marvel not, love, though I thy power admire,

  Though my conceit I further seem to bend

  Than possibly invention can extend,

  And yet am only starved in my desire.

  If thou wilt wonder, here’s the wonder, love,

  That this to me doth yet no wonder prove.

  TO MIRACLE

  IDEA, XXXV

  Some misbelieving and profane in love,

  When I do speak of miracles by thee,

  May say that thou art flatterèd by me,

  Who only write my skill in verse to prove

  See miracles, ye unbelieving, see!

  A dumb-born Muse made to express the mind,

  A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind,

  One by thy name, the other touching thee.

  Blind were mine eyes, till they were seen of thine;

  And mine ears deaf by thy fame healèd be;

  My vices cured by virtues sprung from thee;

  My hopes revived which long in grave had lien.

  All unclean thoughts, foul spirits, cast out in me,

  Only by virtue that proceeds from thee.

  CUPID CONJURED

  IDEA, XXXVI

  Thou purblind boy, since thou hast been so slack

  To wound her heart whose eyes have wounded me

  And suffered her to glory in my wrack,

  Thus to my aid I lastly conjure thee!

  By hellish Styx, by which the Thund’rer swears,

  By thy fair mother’s unavoided power,

  By Hecate’s names, by Proserpine’s sad tears,


  When she was wrapt to the infernal bower!

  By thine own lovèd Psyche, by the fires

  Spent on thine altars flaming up to heaven,

  By all true lovers’ sighs, vows, and desires,

  By all the wounds that ever thou hast given;

  I conjure thee by all that I have named,

  To make her love, or, Cupid, be thou damned!

  IDEA, XXXVII

  Dear, why should you command me to my rest,

  When now the night doth summon all to sleep?

  Methinks this time becometh lovers best;

  Night was ordained together friends to keep.

  How happy are all other living things,

  Which though the day disjoin by several flight,

  The quiet evening yet together brings,

  And each returns unto his love at night!

  O thou that art so courteous else to all,

  Why shouldst thou, Night, abuse me only thus,

  That every creature to his kind dost call,

  And yet ’tis thou dost only sever us?

  Well could I wish it would be ever day,

  If when night comes, you bid me go away.

  IDEA, XXXVIII

  Sitting alone, love bids me go and write;

  Reason plucks back, commanding me to stay,

  Boasting that she doth still direct the way,

  Or else love were unable to indite.

  Love growing angry, vexèd at the spleen,

  And scorning reason’s maimèd argument,

  Straight taxeth reason, wanting to invent

  Where she with love conversing hath not been.

  Reason reproachèd with this coy disdain,

  Despiteth love, and laugheth at her folly;

  And love contemning reason’s reason wholly,

  Thought it in weight too light by many a grain.

  Reason put back doth out of sight remove,

  And love alone picks reason out of love.

  IDEA, XXXIX

  Some, when in rhyme they of their loves do tell,

  With flames and lightnings their exordiums paint.

  Some call on heaven, some invocate on hell,

  And Fates and Furies, with their woes acquaint.

  Elizium is too high a seat for me,

  I will not come in Styx or Phlegethon,

  The thrice-three Muses but too wanton be,

  Like they that lust, I care not, I will none.

  Spiteful Erinnys frights me with her looks,

  My manhood dares not with foul Ate mell,

  I quake to look on Hecate’s charming books,

  I still fear bugbears in Apollo’s cell.

  I pass not for Minerva, nor Astrea,

  Only I call on my divine Idea!

  IDEA, XL

  My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat,

  My words the hammers fashioning my desire,

  My breast the forge including all the heat,

  Love is the fuel which maintains the fire;

  My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth,

  Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning;

  Toiling with pain, my labour never ceaseth,

  In grievous passions my woes still bemoaning;

  My eyes with tears against the fire striving,

  Whose scorching gleed my heart to cinders turneth;

  But with those drops the flame again reviving,

  Still more and more it to my torment burneth,

  With Sisyphus thus do I roll the stone,

  And turn the wheel with damnèd Ixion.

  LOVE’S LUNACY

  IDEA, XLI

  Why do I speak of joy or write of love,

  When my heart is the very den of horror,

  And in my soul the pains of hell I prove,

  With all his torments and infernal terror?

  What should I say? what yet remains to do?

  My brain is dry with weeping all too long;

  My sighs be spent in utt’ring of my woe,

  And I want words wherewith to tell my wrong.

  But still distracted in love’s lunacy,

  And bedlam-like thus raving in my grief,

  Now rail upon her hair, then on her eye,

  Now call her goddess, then I call her thief;

  Now I deny her, then I do confess her,

  Now do I curse her, then again I bless her.

  IDEA, XLII

  Some men there be which like my method well,

  And much commend the strangeness of my vein;

  Some say I have a passing pleasing strain,

  Some say that in my humour I excel.

  Some who not kindly relish my conceit,

  They say, as poets do, I use to feign,

  And in bare words paint out by passions’ pain.

  Thus sundry men their sundry minds repeat.

  I pass not, I, how men affected be,

  Nor who commends or discommends my verse!

  It pleaseth me if I my woes rehearse,

  And in my lines if she my love may see.

  Only my comfort still consists in this,

  Writing her praise I cannot write amiss.

  IDEA, XLIII

  Why should your fair eyes with such sov’reign grace

  Disperse their rays on every vulgar spirit,

  Whilst I in darkness in the self-same place,

  Get not one glance to recompense my merit?

  So doth the plowman gaze the wand’ring star,

  And only rest contented with the light,

  That never learned what constellations are,

  Beyond the bent of his unknowing sight.

  O why should beauty, custom to obey,

  To their gross sense apply herself so ill!

  Would God I were as ignorant as they,

  When I am made unhappy by my skill,

  Only compelled on this poor good to boast!

  Heavens are not kind to them that know them most.

  IDEA, XLIV

  Whilst thus my pen strives to eternise thee,

  Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face,

  Where in the map of all my misery

  Is modelled out the world of my disgrace;

  Whilst in despite of tyrannising times,

  Medea-like, I make thee young again,

  Proudly thou scorn’st my world-outwearing rhymes,

  And murther’st virtue with thy coy disdain;

  And though in youth my youth untimely perish,

  To keep thee from oblivion and the grave,

  Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish,

  Where I intombed my better part shall save;

  And though this earthly body fade and die,

  My name shall mount upon eternity.

  IDEA, XLV

  Muses which sadly sit about my chair,

  Drowned in the tears extorted by my lines;

  With heavy sighs whilst thus I break the air,

  Painting my passions in these sad designs,

  Since she disdains to bless my happy verse,

  The strong built trophies to her living fame,

  Ever henceforth my bosom be your hearse,

  Wherein the world shall now entomb her name.

  Enclose my music, you poor senseless walls,

  Sith she is deaf and will not hear my moans;

  Soften yourselves with every tear that falls,

  Whilst I like Orpheus sing to trees and stones,

  Which with my plaint seem yet with pity moved,

  Kinder than she whom I so long have loved.

  IDEA, XLVI

  Plain-pathed experience, the unlearnèd’s guide,

  Her simple followers evidently shows

  Sometimes what schoolmen scarcely can decide,

  Nor yet wise reason absolutely knows;

  In making trial of a murder wrought,

  If the vile actors of the heinous deed

  Near the dead body happily be brought,

/>   Oft ‘t hath been proved the breathless corse will bleed.

  She coming near, that my poor heart hath slain,

  Long since departed, to the world no more,

  The ancient wounds no longer can contain,

  But fall to bleeding as they did before.

  But what of this? Should she to death be led,

  It furthers justice but helps not the dead.

  IDEA, XLVII

  In pride of wit, when high desire of fame

  Gave life and courage to my lab’ring pen,

  And first the sound and virtue of my name

  Won grace and credit in the ears of men,

  With those the throngèd theatres that press,

  I in the circuit for the laurel strove,

  Where the full praise I freely must confess,

  In heat of blood a modest mind might move;

  With shouts and claps at every little pause,

  When the proud round on every side hath rung,

  Sadly I sit unmoved with the applause,

  As though to me it nothing did belong.

  No public glory vainly I pursue;

  All that I seek is to eternise you.

  IDEA, XLVIII

  Cupid, I hate thee, which I’d have thee know;

  A naked starveling ever mayst thou be!

  Poor rogue, go pawn thy fascia and thy bow

  For some poor rags wherewith to cover thee;

  Or if thou’lt not thy archery forbear,

  To some base rustic do thyself prefer,

  And when corn’s sown or grown into the ear,

  Practice thy quiver and turn crowkeeper;

  Or being blind, as fittest for the trade,

  Go hire thyself some bungling harper’s boy;

  They that are blind are minstrels often made,

  So mayst thou live to thy fair mother’s joy;

  That whilst with Mars she holdeth her old way,

  Thou, her blind son, mayst sit by them and play.

  IDEA, XLIX

  Thou leaden brain, which censur’st what I write,

  And sayst my lines be dull and do not move,

  I marvel not thou feel’st not my delight,