Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) | Page 9

girls at play
And loud
from lips of boys brow-bound with May
Our mightiest age let fall its
gentlest word,
When Song, in semblance of a sweet small bird,
Lit
fluttering on the light swift hand of Day.
XIV
JAMES SHIRLEY
The dusk of day's decline was hard on dark
When evening trembled

round thy glowworm lamp
That shone across her shades and dewy
damp
A small clear beacon whose benignant spark
Was gracious
yet for loiterers' eyes to mark,
Though changed the watchword of our
English camp
Since the outposts rang round Marlowe's lion ramp,

When thy steed's pace went ambling round Hyde Park.
And in the thickening twilight under thee
Walks Davenant, pensive in
the paths where he,
The blithest throat that ever carolled love
In
music made of morning's merriest heart,
Glad Suckling, stumbled
from his seat above
And reeled on slippery roads of alien art.
XV
THE TRIBE OF BENJAMIN
Sons born of many a loyal Muse to Ben,
All true-begotten, warm
with wine or ale,
Bright from the broad light of its presence, hail!

Prince Randolph, nighest his throne of all his men,
Being highest in
spirit and heart who hailed him then
King, nor might other spread so
blithe a sail:
Cartwright, a soul pent in with narrower pale,
Praised
of thy sire for manful might of pen:
Marmion, whose verse keeps
alway keen and fine
The perfume of their Apollonian wine
Who
shared with that stout sire of all and thee
The exuberant chalice of his
echoing shrine:
Is not your praise writ broad in gold which he

Inscribed, that all who praise his name should see?
XVI
ANONYMOUS PLAYS:
"ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM"
Mother whose womb brought forth our man of men,
Mother of
Shakespeare, whom all time acclaims
Queen therefore, sovereign
queen of English dames,
Throned higher than sat thy sonless empress

then,
Was it thy son's young passion-guided pen
Which drew,
reflected from encircling flames,
A figure marked by the earlier of
thy names
Wife, and from all her wedded kinswomen
Marked by
the sign of murderess? Pale and great,
Great in her grief and sin, but
in her death
And anguish of her penitential breath
Greater than all
her sin or sin-born fate,
She stands, the holocaust of dark desire,

Clothed round with song for ever as with fire.
XVII
ANONYMOUS PLAYS
Ye too, dim watchfires of some darkling hour,
Whose fame forlorn
time saves not nor proclaims
For ever, but forgetfulness defames

And darkness and the shadow of death devour,
Lift up ye too your
light, put forth your power,
Let the far twilight feel your soft small
flames
And smile, albeit night name not even their names,
Ghost by
ghost passing, flower blown down on flower:
That sweet-tongued
shadow, like a star's that passed
Singing, and light was from its
darkness cast
To paint the face of Painting fair with praise:[1]
And
that wherein forefigured smiles the pure
Fraternal face of
Wordsworth's Elidure
Between two child-faced masks of merrier
days.[2]
[1] Doctor Dodypol.
[2] Nobody and Somebody.
XVIII
ANONYMOUS PLAYS
More yet and more, and yet we mark not all:
The Warning fain to bid
fair women heed
Its hard brief note of deadly doom and deed;[1]

The verse that strewed too thick with flowers the hall
Whence Nero
watched his fiery festival;[2]
That iron page wherein men's eyes who

read
See, bruised and marred between two babes that bleed,
A mad
red-handed husband's martyr fall;[3]
The scene which crossed and
streaked with mirth the strife
Of Henry with his sons and witchlike
wife;[4]
And that sweet pageant of the kindly fiend,
Who, seeing
three friends in spirit and heart made one,
Crowned with good hap the
true-love wiles he screened
In the pleached lanes of pleasant
Edmonton.[5]
[1] A Warning for Fair Women.
[2] The Tragedy of Nero.
[3] A Yorkshire Tragedy.
[4] Look about you.
[5] The Merry Devil of Edmonton.
XIX
THE MANY
I
Greene, garlanded with February's few flowers,
Ere March came in
with Marlowe's rapturous rage:
Peele, from whose hand the sweet
white locks of age
Took the mild chaplet woven of honoured hours:

Nash, laughing hard: Lodge, flushed from lyric bowers:
And Lilly,
a goldfinch in a twisted cage
Fed by some gay great lady's pettish
page
Till short sweet songs gush clear like short spring showers: Kid,
whose grim sport still gambolled over graves:
And Chettle, in whose
fresh funereal verse
Weeps Marian yet on Robin's wildwood hearse:

Cooke, whose light boat of song one soft breath saves,
Sighed from
a maiden's amorous mouth averse:
Live likewise ye: Time takes not
you for slaves.

XX
THE MANY
II
Haughton, whose mirth gave woman all her will:
Field, bright and
loud with laughing flower and bird
And keen alternate notes of laud
and gird:
Barnes, darkening once with Borgia's deeds the quill

Which tuned the passion of Parthenophil:
Blithe burly Porter, broad
and bold of word:
Wilkins, a voice with strenuous pity stirred:
Turk
Mason: Brewer, whose tongue drops honey still:
Rough Rowley,
handling song with Esau's hand:
Light Nabbes: lean Sharpham, rank
and raw by turns,
But fragrant with a forethought once of Burns:

Soft Davenport, sad-robed, but blithe and bland:
Brome, gipsy-led
across the woodland ferns:
Praise be with all, and place among our
band.
XXI
EPILOGUE
Our mother, which wast twice, as history saith,
Found first among