Sad melancholy, that persuades Men from themselves, to think they be Hath long and bootless dwelt with me. I still might love, forget, and have her here. But such she is not; nor would I For twice as many torments more, Hath brought to those I felt before; For then no future time might hap to know Ye hours then, but as minutes be! Though so I shall be sooner old, Which, but in her, can none behold. BOOK III. SONG 2. A comparison. As when a woodman on the greeny lawns, Would count his herd, more bucks, more prickets, fawns Each little dimple, every glance that shines My skill too weak for so admired designs; For whilst one beauty I am close about, Millions do newly rise and put me out. SONG. [From Minor Poems.] Welcome, welcome do I sing Far more welcome than the spring: Love, that to the voice is near Welcome, welcome then I sing Love, that looks still on your eyes, To benumb our arteries, Shall not want the summer's sun. Welcome, welcome, &c. Love, that still may see your cheeks, Is a fool if e'er he seeks Other lilies, other roses. Welcome, welcome, &c. Love, to whom your soft lip yields, All the odours of the fields Never, never shall be missing. Welcome, welcome, &c. Love, that question would anew Let him rightly study you, Welcome, welcome, &c. THE INNER TEMPLE MASQUE. The Charm. Son of Erebus and night And with the jaspis: then arise SONNET. Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry By them conceive my thoughts, and tell me, fair, GEORGE WITHER. (GEORGE WITHER was born at Brentworth in Hampshire, June 11, 1588, and died in the year 1667; his literary achievement, both in verse and prose, being proportioned to his length of years. The dates of his chief works are as follows: 1612, the Elegy on Prince Henry; 1613, Epithalamia; 1613, Abuses Stript and Whipt; 1615, Fidelia and Shepherd's Hunting. To the same year must also be ascribed his share in Browne's Shepherd's Pipe, 1618, the Motto; 1622, the Mistress of Philarete; 1623, the Hymns and Songs of the Church; 1628, Britain's Remembrancer; 1634, Emblems; 1641, Hallelujah. The above list is very far indeed from exhausting the complete catalogue of Wither's voluminous works. He was an ardent politician, and in the stirring times of the Civil War was perpetually pouring forth songs and broadsheets in justification of the cause he had taken up. Probably no library in England possesses an absolutely complete collection of Wither's works. Certainly the British Museum and the Bodleian do not. The Rev. T. Corser, of Stand, near Manchester, is said to have had the fullest collection in existence, but that has been since dispersed. The poems have been collected by the Spenser Society, but it is a matter for regret that they are not to be had in a more generally accessible form. It is one of the most striking blemishes of Chalmers' collection that Wither is absolutely ignored in it. Of modern editors of portions of his works the chief is Sir Egerton Brydges, who republished the Shepherd's Hunting and the Fidelia at the beginning of this century, and also gave long extracts from Wither's other poems in his Censura Literaria. The Hymns and Songs of the Church, and the Hallelujah were republished for Russell Smith in 1856 and 1857.] Wither resembles Wordsworth in having written almost all his good work within a period of a few years. That period is from 1613 to 1623. The great exception is the Hallelujah-a collection of sacred poems, in which are some beautiful things written as late as 1641. On the whole, however, the collection of Wither's poems entitled Juvenilia contains nearly all his best writing. The enthusiasm with which he threw himself into politics damaged his genius. His nature was not large enough to pour itself with equal power into the two channels of art and practical life. He became an eager partisan and sectary, retaining that moral elevation and dignity which ever honourably distinguishes him, but losing all sense of form and measure, perhaps indeed deliberately neglecting them as things indifferent. It is then to the early part of his life that we have to attend; and here we must remember his two years at Oxford, where he was a member of Magdalen College: two happy years, he himself has told us, which were unfortunately cut short by his sudden withdrawal from the University. In 1605, he went up to Lincoln's Inn, and there became acquainted with Browne, who was at that time a member of the Inner Temple. The friendship was a very important one for Wither. The two wrote in friendly rivalry, and often in intimate co-partnership, and we shall hardly err in laying great stress upon Browne's influence during the first period of Wither's poetry. Browne was a born artist, if ever there was one, and his example wooed the naturally ascetic and polemical genius of Wither into pleasanter paths for a while. Wither in later life expresses most unnecessary repentance for his early poems. He had no such reason for feelings of the kind as perhaps Chaucer had. Not a single line of his poetry is really corrupt or dishonourable to the writer. But he was young then, and could write of love and the beauty of nature and the beauty of woman, with a facile pen and an ardent delight in the fulness of his life and the power of his art, which seemed no doubt profane and dangerous trifling to the Puritan captain of the Civil War. But even in his youth life did not altogether smile upon him. His very harmless satires, published under the title Abuses Stript and Whipt in 1613, were rewarded by imprisonment in the Marshalsea. As Lamb says, it is wonderful that such perfectly general denunciations of the ordinary vices of Gluttony, Avarice, Vanity, and the rest of it in the abstract should have seemed offensive to any human being. But the cap fitted some one in high place, and Wither had to expiate his plain spokenness by a rigorous confinement. After his liberation he renewed more intimately than ever his friendship with Browne, and in 1615 wrote in conjunction with him the Shepherd's Pipe. His own Shepherd's Hunting, which he wrote in prison (see the extract here given) and which contains perhaps his very best work, appeared in the same year. To this date also must be assigned the first edition of his Fidelia, a poetical |