Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) | Page 8

with high funereal art
Carved night, and chiselled shadow: be
the tomb
That speaks him famous graven with signs of doom

Intrenched inevitably in lines athwart,
As on some thunder-blasted
Titan's brow
His record of rebellion. Not the day
Shall strike forth
music from so stern a chord,
Touching this marble: darkness, none
knows how,
And stars impenetrable of midnight, may.
So looms the
likeness of thy soul, John Ford.
VII
JOHN WEBSTER
Thunder: the flesh quails, and the soul bows down.
Night: east, west,
south, and northward, very night.
Star upon struggling star strives
into sight,
Star after shuddering star the deep storms drown.
The
very throne of night, her very crown,
A man lays hand on, and usurps
her right.
Song from the highest of heaven's imperious height

Shoots, as a fire to smite some towering town.
Rage, anguish,
harrowing fear, heart-crazing crime,
Make monstrous all the
murderous face of Time
Shown in the spheral orbit of a glass

Revolving. Earth cries out from all her graves.
Frail, on frail rafts,
across wide-wallowing waves,
Shapes here and there of child and
mother pass.

VIII
THOMAS DECKER
Out of the depths of darkling life where sin
Laughs piteously that
sorrow should not know
Her own ill name, nor woe be counted woe;

Where hate and craft and lust make drearier din
Than sounds
through dreams that grief holds revel in;
What charm of joy-bells
ringing, streams that flow,
Winds that blow healing in each note they
blow,
Is this that the outer darkness hears begin?
O sweetest heart of all thy time save one,
Star seen for love's sake
nearest to the sun,
Hung lamplike o'er a dense and doleful city,
Not
Shakespeare's very spirit, howe'er more great,
Than thine toward man
was more compassionate,
Nor gave Christ praise from lips more
sweet with pity.
IX
THOMAS MIDDLETON
A wild moon riding high from cloud to cloud,
That sees and sees not,
glimmering far beneath,
Hell's children revel along the shuddering
heath
With dirge-like mirth and raiment like a shroud:
A worse fair
face than witchcraft's, passion-proud,
With brows blood-flecked
behind their bridal wreath
And lips that bade the assassin's sword find
sheath
Deep in the heart whereto love's heart was vowed:
A game
of close contentious crafts and creeds
Played till white England bring
black Spain to shame:
A son's bright sword and brighter soul, whose
deeds
High conscience lights for mother's love and fame:
Pure
gipsy flowers, and poisonous courtly weeds:
Such tokens and such
trophies crown thy name.
X
THOMAS HEYWOOD

Tom, if they loved thee best who called thee Tom,
What else may all
men call thee, seeing thus bright
Even yet the laughing and the
weeping light
That still thy kind old eyes are kindled from?
Small
care was thine to assail and overcome
Time and his child Oblivion:
yet of right
Thy name has part with names of lordlier might
For
English love and homely sense of home,
Whose fragrance keeps thy
small sweet bayleaf young
And gives it place aloft among thy peers

Whence many a wreath once higher strong Time has hurled: And this
thy praise is sweet on Shakespeare's tongue--
"O good old man, how
well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world!"
XI
GEORGE CHAPMAN
High priest of Homer, not elect in vain,
Deep trumpets blow before
thee, shawms behind
Mix music with the rolling wheels that wind

Slow through the labouring triumph of thy train:
Fierce history,
molten in thy forging brain,
Takes form and fire and fashion from thy
mind,
Tormented and transmuted out of kind:
But howsoe'er thou
shift thy strenuous strain,
Like Tailor[1] smooth, like Fisher[2]
swollen, and now
Grim Yarrington[3] scarce bloodier marked than
thou,
Then bluff as Mayne's[4] or broad-mouthed Barry's[5] glee;
Proud still with hoar predominance of brow
And beard like foam
swept off the broad blown sea,
Where'er thou go, men's reverence
goes with thee.
[1] Author of The Hog hath lost his Pearl.
[2] Author of Fuimus Troes, or the True Trojans.
[3] Author of Two Tragedies in One.
[4] Author of The City Match.
[5] Author of Ram-Alley, or Merry Tricks.

XII
JOHN MARSTON
The bitterness of death and bitterer scorn
Breathes from the
broad-leafed aloe-plant whence thou
Wast fain to gather for thy
bended brow
A chaplet by no gentler forehead worn.
Grief deep as
hell, wrath hardly to be borne,
Ploughed up thy soul till round the
furrowing plough
The strange black soil foamed, as a black beaked
prow
Bids night-black waves foam where its track has torn.
Too
faint the phrase for thee that only saith
Scorn bitterer than the
bitterness of death
Pervades the sullen splendour of thy soul,
Where
hate and pain make war on force and fraud
And all the strengths of
tyrants; whence unflawed
It keeps this noble heart of hatred whole.
XIII
JOHN DAY
Day was a full-blown flower in heaven, alive
With murmuring joy of
bees and birds aswarm,
When in the skies of song yet flushed and
warm
With music where all passion seems to strive
For utterance,
all things bright and fierce to drive
Struggling along the splendour of
the storm,
Day for an hour put off his fiery form,
And golden
murmurs from a golden hive
Across the strong bright summer wind
were heard,
And laughter soft as smiles from