Giles Fletcher

“ Smile not, fair Doris, though he foul do seem,
Let pass thy words that savour of disgrace;
He's worth my love, and so I him esteem,
Renowned by birth, and come of Neptune's race,
Neptune that doth the glassy ocean tame,
Neptune, by birth from mighty Jove which came.
DORIS
I grant an honour to be Neptune's child,
A grace to be so near with Jove allied.
But yet, sweet nymph, with this be not beguiled;
Where nature's graces are by looks decried,
So foul, so rough, so ugly as a clown,
And worse than this, a monster with one eye! ”

“ SONNET MADE UPON THE TWO TWINS, DAUGHTERS OF THE LADY MOLLINEUX, BOTH PASSING LIKE, AND EXCEEDING FAIR
Poets did feign that heavens a Venus had,
Matchless herself, and Cupid was her son;
Men sued to these, and of their smiles were glad,
By whom so many famous were undone.
Now Cupid mourns that he hath lost his might,
And that these two so comely are to see;
And Venus frowns because they have her right.
Yet both so like that both shall blameless be;
With heaven's two twins for godhead these may strive,
And rule a world with least part of a frown ”

“ And then my thoughts do wish for to be higher.
But when I view what winds the cedars toss,
What storms men feels that covet for renown,
I blame myself that I have wished my loss,
And scorn a kingdom, though it give a crown.
Ah Licia, though the wonder of my thought,
My heart's content, procurer of my bliss,
For whom a crown I do esteem as naught,
As Asia's wealth, too mean to buy a kiss! ”

“ By which my soul was freèd from all dark?
And am I left distressed to live alone,
Where none my tears and mournful tale shall mark?
Ah sun, why shine thy looks, thy looks like gold,
When horsemen brave thou risest in the east?
Ah Cynthia pale, to whom my griefs I told,
Why do you both rejoice both man and beast?
And I alone, alone that dark possess
By Licia's absence brighter than the sun,
Whose smiling light did ease my sad distress,
And broke the clouds, when tears like rain begun.
Heavens, grant that light and so me waking keep,
Or shut my eyes and rock me fast asleep! ”

“ Rein in these brain-sick thoughts with judgment's bridle,
A short prevention helps a mighty domage.
If Phillis love, love her, yet love her so
That if she fly, thou may'st love's fire forego.
Play with the fire, yet die not in the flame;
Show passions in thy words, but not in heart;
Lest when thou think to bring thy thoughts in frame,
Thou prove thyself a prisoner by thine art. ”

“ O tears which gladly would burst out to brooks,
Oh spent on fruitless sand my surging moans,
Oh thoughts enthralled unto care-boding looks!
Ah just laments of my unjust distress,
Ah fond desires whom reason could not guide!
Oh hopes of love that intimate redress,
Yet prove the load-stars unto bad betide!
When will you cease? Or shall pain never-ceasing,
Seize oh my heart? Oh mollify your rage,
Lest your assaults with over-swift increasing,
Procure my death, or call on timeless age.
What if they do? They shall but feed the fire,
Which I have kindled by my fond desire. ”

“ Floods are my tears, to end this burning strife,
And yet I sigh for to increase the same;
I mourn alone because alone I burn;
Who doubts of this, then let him learn to love;
Her looks cold ice into a flame can turn,
As I distressèd in myself do prove.
Respect, fair Licia, what my torments are;
Count but the tithe both of my sighs and tears;
See how my love doth still increase my care,
And care's increase my life to nothing wears. ”

“ When as her leaves great moan for pity maken.
The falling fountains from the mountains falling,
Cried out, alas, so fair and be so cruel!
And babbling echo never ceasèd calling,
Phillis, disdain is fit for none but truthless.
The rising pines wherein I had engraved
Thy memory consulting with the wind,
Are trucemen to thy heart and thoughts depraved,
And say, thy kind should not be so unkind.
But, out alas! so fell is Phillis fearless,
That she hath made her Damon well nigh tearless. ”

“ For men to trust men in their love are loth;
Thus had we both of love a lover's care.
Haply he seeks his sorrows to renew,
That for his love doth make another sue.
By her a kiss, a kiss to me she sent.
A kiss for price more worth than purest gold.
She gave it her, to me the kiss was meant;
A she to kiss, what harm if she were bold?
Happy those lips that had so sweet a kiss,
For heaven itself scarce yields so sweet a bliss! ”

“ Still living fame in time doth fade away;
The mountains proud we see in time come under;
And earth for age we see in time decay;
The sun in time forgets for to retire
From out the east where he was wont to rise;
The basest thoughts we see in time aspire,
And greedy minds in time do wealth despise.
Thus all, sweet fair, in time must have an end,
Except thy beauty, virtues, and thy friend.
[Pg 112]
XXIX
Why died I not whenas I last did sleep?
O sleep too short that shadowed forth my dear!
Heavens, hear my prayers, nor thus me waking keep! ”

“ And reading sent with tears that never fitten,
To my love's queen, that hath my heart in keep,
Have made my lambkins lay them down and sigh;
But Phillis sits, and reads, and calls them trifles.
Oh heavens, why climb not happy lines so high,
To rent that ruthless heart that all hearts rifles!
None writes with truer faith, or greater love,
Yet out, alas! I have no power to move. ”

“ Unhappy Damon, witty in self-grieving;
Tend thou thy flocks; let tyrant love attaint
Those tender hearts that made their love their living.
And as kind time keeps Phillis from thy sight,
So let prevention banish fancy quite.
Cast hence this idle fuel of desire,
That feeds that flame wherein thy heart consumeth;
Let reason school thy will which doth aspire,
And counsel cool impatience that presumeth;
Drive hence vain thoughts which are fond love's abettors,
For he that seeks his thraldom merits fetters. ”

“ My thoughts presage, which time to come shall try,
That thousands conquered for their love shall die.
[Pg 125]
XLI
If, aged Charon, when my life shall end,
I pass thy ferry and my waftage pay,
Thy oars shall fall, thy boat and mast shall rend,
And through the deep shall be a dry foot-way.
For why? My heart with sighs doth breathe such flame
That air and water both incensèd be,
The boundless ocean from whose mouth they came,
For from my heat not heaven itself is free. ”

“ Thus sighs and tears, flame, grief shall plead for me;
So shall I pray, and you a goddess be.
[Pg 120]
XXXVII
I speak, fair Licia, what my torments be,
But then my speech too partial do I find;
For hardly words can with those thoughts agree,
Those thoughts that swarm in such a troubled mind.
Then do I vow my tongue shall never speak
Nor tell my grief that in my heart doth lie;
But cannon-like, I then surcharged do break,
And so my silence worse than speech I try.
Thus speech or none, they both do breed my care;
I live dismayed, and kill my heart with grief ”

“ But plaints and tears, laments and sighs I spend,
Yet greater torments do my heart destroy;
I could all these from out my heart still send,
If after these I might my love enjoy.
But heavens conspire, and heavens I must obey,
That seeking love I still must want my ease;
For greatest joys are tempered with delay,
Things soon obtained do least of all us please.
[Pg 157] My thoughts repine and think the time too long,
My love impatient wisheth to obtain;
I blame the heavens that do me all this wrong
To make me loved and will not ease my pain. ”

“ It may reasonably be expected that in any sonnet-cycle there will be found many sonnets in praise of the loved one's beauty, many lamenting her hardness of heart; all the wonders of heaven and earth will be catalogued to find comparisons for her loveliness; the river by which she dwells will be more pleasant than all other rivers in the world, a list of them being appended in proof; the thoughts of night-time, when the lover bemoans himself and his rejected state, or dreams of happy love, will be dwelt upon ”

“ Loud are my sighs because they pierce the sky,
Not loud my sighs because they are not heard;
My death begun because I artless cry,
But not begun because I am debarred.
Thus sighs and death my heart no comfort give;
Both life deny, and both do make me live.
Bold are her smiles, her smiles that are not bold,
Wise are her words, those words that are not wise,
[Pg 149] Cold are her lips, those lips that are not cold,
Ice are those hands, those hands that are not ice. ”

“ Howsoever, Love in this age hath behaved himself in that loose manner as it is counted a disgrace to give him but a kind look, yet I take the passion in itself to be of that honor and credit, as it is a perfect resemblance of the greatest happiness, and rightly valued at his just price (in a mind that is sincerely and truly amorous) , an affection of greatest virtue and able of himself to eternise the meanest vassal. ”

“ Whose not affected but well couchèd tears
Have power, have worth, a marble mind to shake,
Whose fame no iron-age or time outwears.
Then lay you down in Phillis' lap and sleep,
Until the weeping read, and reading weep.
[Pg 14]
I
Oh pleasing thoughts, apprentices of love,
Fore-runners of desire, sweet mithridates
The poison of my sorrows to remove,
With whom my hopes and fear full oft debates!
Enrich yourselves and me by your self riches,
Which are the thoughts you spend on heaven-bred beauty,
Rouse you my muse beyond our poets' pitches,
And, working wonders, yet say all is duty! ”

“ It must be confessed that the "painted cabinet" of the lady's beauty absorbs more attention than the "majesty and riches of the mind," but the glints of a loftier ideal shining now and then among the conventions, lift the cycle above the level of mere ear-pleasing rhythms and fantastical imageries. ”

“ Into fair Phillis' lap, my lovely friend,
When sleep her sense with slumber doth restrain.
I would be changèd to a milk-white bull,
When midst the gladsome fields she should appear,
By pleasant fineness to surprise my dear,
Whilst from their stalks, she pleasant flowers did pull. ”

“ Floods, echo, grounds, for sorrow cry,
We grieve since Phillis nill kind Damon's love consort.
[Pg 26]
XIII
Love guides the roses of thy lips,
And flies about them like a bee;
If I approach he forward skips,
And if I kiss he stingeth me.
Love in thine eyes doth build his bower,
And sleeps within their pretty shine;
And if I look the boy will lower,
And from their orbs shoots shafts divine.
Love works thy heart within his fire,
And in my tears doth firm the same;
And if I tempt it will retire,
And of my plaints doth make a game. ”

“ A LOVER'S MAZE
True are my thoughts, my thoughts that are untrue,
Blind are my eyes, my eyes that are not blind,
New is my love, my love that is not new,
Kind is that fair, that fair that is not kind. ”

“ So blushing wise, my thoughts in prison hold.
Cold are her lips because they breathe no heat,
Not cold her lips because my heart they burn;
Ice are her hands because the snow's so great,
Not ice her hands that all to ashes turn. ”

“ To devotees of the sonnet, who find in that poetic form the moat perfect vehicle that has ever been devised for the expression of a single importunate emotion, it will not seem strange that at the threshold of a literary period whose characteristic note is the most intense personality, the instinct of poets should have directed them to the form most perfectly fitted for the expression of this inner motive. ”

“ A more temperate judgment is that of another, who says that he "took part without discredit in the choir of singers who were men of action too." Licia is what a typical sonnet-cycle ought to be, a delicate and almost intangible thread of story on which are strung the separate sonnet-pearls. In this case the jewels have a particular finish. Fletcher has adopted the idea of a series of quatrains, often extending the number to four, and a concluding couplet, which he seems fond of utilising to give an epigrammatic finish to the ingenious incident he so often makes the subject of the sonnet. ”

“ Shall thrive by woeful dew-drops of my dolor;
And from the wounds I bear through fancy's rigour,
My streaming blood shall yield the crimson color.
The ravished sighs that ceaseless take their issue
From out the furnace of my heart inflamed,
To yield you lasting springs shall never miss you;
So by my plaints and pains, you shall be famed. ”

“ In spite of its defects, the lax structure of the sonnet-form, the obscurities and needless blurring, and the disappointing inequalities, Phillis takes a high place among the sonnet-cycles, and must ever be dear to lovers of quiet, melodious verse, who have made themselves at home in the golden world of the pastoral poets and mislike not the country-carolling heard therein. ”

“ How do my hopes dissolve to tears in vain,
As wont the snows, 'fore angry sun to weep!
Ah noisome life that hath no weal in keep!
My forward grief hath form and working might;
My pleasures like the shadows take their flight ”

“ Yet take this by the way; though I am so liberal to grant thus much, a man may write of love and not be in love, as well as of husbandry and not go to the plough, or of witches and be none, or of holiness and be flat profane."
What "shadowings" the poet may intend he refuses to confide to us. "If thou muse what my Licia is, take her to be some Diana, at the least chaste; or some Minerva; no Venus, fairer far. [Pg 81] It may be she is Learning's image, or some heavenly wonder, which the precisest may not dislike: perhaps under that name I have shadowed Discipline. ”

“ Firm is his course, firm is thy loyalty.
He paints the fields through liquid crystal showers,
Thou paint'st my verse with Pallas, learnèd flowers;
With Zephirus' sweet, breath he fills the plains,
And thou my heart with weeping sighs dost wring;
His brows are dewed with morning's crystal spring,
Thou mak'st my eyes with tears bemoan my pains.
[Pg 61]
XXXI
Devoid of reason, thrall to foolish ire,
I walk and chase a savage fairy still,
Now near the flood, straight on the mounting hill,
Now midst the woods of youth, and vain desire.
For leash I bear a cord of careful grief ”