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The tongues of kids shall be thy meat;
Their milk thy drink; and thou shalt eat
The paste of filberts for thy bread
With cream of cowslips butterèd :
Thy feasting-table shall be hills
With daisies spread, and daffadils;
Where thou shalt sit, and Red-breast by,
For meat, shall give thee melody.
I'll give thee chains and carcanets
Of primroses and violets.

A bag and bottle thou shalt have,
That richly wrought, and this as brave;
So that as either shall express
The wearer's no mean shepherdess.
At shearing-times, and yearly wakes,
When Themilis his pastime makes,
There thou shalt be; and be the wit,
Nay more, the feast, and grace of it.
On holydays, when virgins meet
To dance the heys with nimble feet,
Thou shalt come forth, and then appear
The Queen of Roses for that year.
And having danced ('bove all the best)
Carry the garland from the rest,
In wicker-baskets maids shall bring
To thee, my dearest shepherdling,
The blushing apple, bashful pear,

And shame-faced plum, all simp'ring there.
Walk in the groves, and thou shalt find
The name of Phillis in the rind

Of every straight and smooth-skin tree;
Where kissing that, I'll twice kiss thee.
To thee a sheep-hook I will send,
Be-prank'd with ribbands, to this end,
This, this alluring hook might be
Less for to catch a sheep, than me.
Thou shalt have possets, wassails fine,
Not made of ale, but spicèd wine;
To make thy maids and self free mirth,

All sitting near the glitt'ring hearth.
Thou shalt have ribbands, roses, rings,

Gloves, garters, stockings, shoes, and strings
Of winning colours, that shall move

Others to lust, but me to love.

—These, nay, and more, thine own shall be, If thou wilt love, and live with me.

WILLIAM HABINGTON.

[WILLIAM HABINGTON was born at Hindlip Hall, near Worcester, in 1605, and died 1654. His Castara alone preserves his name from oblivion, but he also wrote a tragi-comedy entitled The Queene of Arragon, acted in 1640, and completed a History of Edward IV, which had been set in hand by his father. The first edition of Castara was published in 1634, the second in 1635, and the third, enlarged and in the form in which we now possess the poems, in 1640. The poems have been reprinted by Chalmers in 1810, Gutch in 1812, Mr. Arber in 1870.]

The centre alike of Habington's life and of his poetry is the lady whom he has sung under the fanciful name of Castara. She was Lucy, daughter of William, Lord Powis, rather above her lover in rank and wealth, as his own verses plainly show, but, as is not less obvious, at no time indifferent to his courtship. What obstacles were interposed by her parents and relatives yielded to their mutual constancy, and Habington was allowed to carry off his bride to his country-house at Hindlip, in Worcestershire, a house which, as he tells her,

'doth not want extent
Of roome, (though not magnificent)
To give free welcome to content.'

There they seem to have lived a happy equable life together. Habington devotes as many of his poems to his wife, as to his mistress, and in them reaches a higher level of poetic accomplishment than he elsewhere attains. It is pleasant to contemplate the happy course of this pure and honourable affection, and it is impossible not to feel a kind of liking for so constant a wooer, so good a friend, and so upright a man. We must not complain if, like Evelyn, Habington seems to have gone through the Civil War without taking a decided part one way or the other. man was no hero, nor born to shine in public life. What political

The

sympathies his writings reveal were strongly Royalist; he himself came of an old Catholic stock, and was educated at St. Omer; and we may be sure that as far as he took any side at all, he took part against those whom he would regard as rebels and schismatics. Habington—as revealed to us by his own verses—was something of a dreamer, something of an ascetic, something even of a bigot. His was just the sort of life and character which could live through, as not of them, the din and turmoil and passion of those stirring years. He was not of those who are great among the sons of men; nevertheless the interest that his work arouses is likely rather to increase than diminish, for though narrow in scope it is intense in feeling, and though in parts feeble and one-sided, it is as a whole made vital by the impress of a distinct and original personality.

It is not altogether easy to gather from Habington's poems in what relation he stood to previous or contemporary singers. The one indubitable fact is his devotion to Sidney, a sentiment he shares in common with all the poets of that time, on whom the Astrophel and Stella sonnets made the most marked impression. Of his few references to other poets the first occurs in a poetical account of his own youthful years, which he gives in The Holy Man:

'Grown elder I admired

Our poets, as from Heaven inspired;

What obelisks decreed I fit

For Spenser's art and Sydney's wit!

But waxing sober, soon I found

Fame but an idle sound.'

Another mention of Sidney occurs in a sonnet commemorating Ovid's Corinna and Petrarch's Laura

'while our famous Thames

Doth whisper Sidney's Stella to her streams.'

There are also two passing mentions of Drayton and Spenser, and an interesting allusion to 'Chapman's reverend ashes' lying 'rudely mingled in the vulgar dust.' There are no allusions to such poets as Herbert, whose genius was in some respects akin to his own, but this is easily explained by the difference between the two men's religious opinions.

Castara is divided into three, by some editors into four parts. There are at any rate four distinct themes-the Mistress, the Wife,

the Friend, and the Holy Man. It is by his love verses that Habington is best known, though some of his most powerful and deeply-felt work is to be found in the other sections. A feature which strikes the reader of these verses is their almost exaggerated purity of tone. Habington is never tired of assuring us of the chastity of his affection, and the reader wearies of the monotony of assertions which might very well be taken for granted. In one passage he says scornfully of other poets—

You who are earth and cannot rise

Above your sense,

Boasting the envied wealth which lies
Bright in your mistress' lips or eyes,

Betray a pitied eloquence.'

It is only fair however to say that, all deductions made, Habington's love poems are often sweet and tunable enough, and show real warmth of feeling and delicacy of sentiment. The verses on his friend and kinsman Talbot, a nephew of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who died young, also contain some fine passages; but more characteristic and less agreeable features of the writer's mind come out in The Holy Man. There are some exceedingly powerful and sombre verses in this collection, but the tone of them is more than Catholic; in parts is revealed an almost Calvinistic relentlessness of bigotry. Habington speaks, as in duty bound, as a good Catholic, and assumes that the Holy Man is necessarily of his own creed. 'Catholique faith is the foundation on which he erects religion; knowing it a ruinous madnesse to build in the ayre of a private spirit or on the sands of any new schisme.' This is as it should be; one admires him for his sturdy maintenance of unpopular opinions; but it is not easy equally to sympathise with his description of his God, who 'without passion didst provide to punish treason racks and death in hell,' and who

'when he as your judge appears

In vain you'll tremble and lament,
And hope to soften him with teares,
To no advantage penitent.'

But gloomy as his theology may be, it is yet the natural outcome of that intense and narrow spirit, and some of the lines in this section have a searching penetrating power such as is not often found in Herbert or other religious poets more widely famous. Habington is terribly in earnest; he has forgotten his love for his

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