Michael Drayton

“ Cleon is rough, inclined to be rude and scoffing, totally without tact, even where his mistress is concerned. Lalus remembers her upbringing and her tastes; he makes no unnecessary or ostentatious display of wealth; his gifts are simple and charming, while Cleon's are so grotesquely unsuited to a swain, that it is tempting to suppose that Drayton was quietly satirizing Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd. Lirope listens gravely to the swains in turn, and makes demure but provoking answers, raising each to the height of hope, and then casting them both down into the depths of despair ”

“ His great industry, his careful study, and his great receptivity are shown in the unusual spectacle of a man who has sung well in the language of his youth, suddenly learning, in his age, the tongue spoken by the younger generation, and reproducing it with individuality and sureness of touch. It is in rhetoric, splendid or rugged, in argument, in plain statement or description, in the outline sketch of a picture, that Drayton excels; magic of atmosphere and colouring are rarely present. ”

“ But the main inspiration, as it is the main theme, of the Polyolbion is the glory and might and wealth, past, present, and future, of England, her possessions and her folk. Through all this glory, however, we catch the tone of Elizabethan sorrow over the 'Ruines of Time'; grief that all these mighty men and their works will perish and be forgotten, unless the poet makes them live for ever on the lips of men. Drayton's own voluminousness has defeated his purpose, and sunk his poem by its own bulk. ”

“ It is in the songs interspersed in the Eclogues that Drayton's best work at this time is to be found: already his metrical versatility is discernible; for though he doubtless remembered the many varieties of metre employed by Spenser in the Calendar, his verses already bear a stamp of their own. The long but impetuous lines, such as 'Trim up her golden tresses with Apollo's sacred tree', afford a striking contrast to the archaic romance-metre, derived from Sir Thopas and its fellows, which appears in Dowsabel, and it again to the melancholy, murmuring cadences of the lament for Elphin. ”

“ Though he was a keen observer of country sights and sounds (a fact sufficiently attested by the Nymphidia and the Nymphals) , it is evident that his interest in most things except flowers was rather momentary or conventional than continuous and heart-felt; but of the flowers he loves to talk, whether he weaves us a garland for the Thame's wedding, or gives us the contents of a maund of simples; and his love, if somewhat homely and unimaginative, is apparent enough. ”

“ My zeale, my hope, my vowes, my praise, my prayer,
My soules oblation to thy sacred name:
Which name my Muse to highest heauen shal raise
By chast desire, true loue, and vertues praise.
Amour 2
My fayre, if thou wilt register my loue,
More then worlds volumes shall thereof arise;
Preserue my teares, and thou thy selfe shall proue
A second flood downe rayning from mine eyes.
Note but my sighes, and thine eyes shal behold
The Sun-beames smothered with immortall smoke;
And if by thee, my prayers may be enrold,
They heauen and earth to pitty shall prouoke. ”

“ Drayton's chief attempt in the jewelled or ornamental style appeared in 1595, with the title of Endimion and Phoebe, and was, in a sense, an imitation of Marlowe's Hero and Leander. Hero and Leander is, as Swinburne says, a shrine of Parian marble, illumined from within by a clear flame of passion; while Endimion and Phoebe is rather a curiously wrought tapestry, such as that in Mortimer's Tower, woven in splendid and harmonious colours, wherein, however, the figures attain no clearness or subtlety of outline, and move in semi-conventional scenery. ”

“ Thou leaden braine, which censur'st what I write,
And say'st my lines be dull and doe not moue,
I meruaile not thou feelst not my delight,
Which neuer felt my fiery tuch of loue.
But thou whose pen hath like a Pack-horse seru'd,
Whose stomack vnto gaule hath turn'd thy foode,
Whose sences like poore prisoners hunger-staru'd,
Whose griefe hath parch'd thy body, dry'd thy blood.
Thou which hast scorned life, and hated death,
And in a moment mad, sober, glad, and sorry,
Thou which hast band thy thoughts and curst thy breath,
With thousand plagues more then in purgatory. ”

“ In the comparison of the two editions the nobler, if more strained, tone of the earlier is obvious; it is still Elizabethan, in its nobility of ideal and purpose, in its enthusiasm, in its belief and confidence in England and her men; and this even though we catch a glimpse of the Jacobean woe in the Ode to John Savage: the 1619 Odes are of a different world; their spirit is lighter, more insouciant in appearance, though perhaps studiedly so; the rhythms are more fantastic, with less of strength and firmness, though with more of grace and superficial beauty ”

“ Stay, stay, sweet Time; behold, or ere thou passe
From world to world, thou long hast sought to see,
That wonder now wherein all wonders be,
Where heauen beholds her in a mortall glasse.
Nay, looke thee, Time, in this Celesteall glasse,
And thy youth past in this faire mirror see:
Behold worlds Beautie in her infancie,
What shee was then, and thou, or ere shee was.
Now passe on, Time: to after-worlds tell this,
Tell truelie, Time, what in thy time hath beene,
That they may tel more worlds what Time hath seene,
And heauen may ioy to think on past worlds blisse. ”

“ He requires, like all other poets, the impulse of an absolutely personal and individual feeling, a moment of more intimate sympathy, to rouse him to his heights of song. Thus the Ballad of Agincourt is on the very theme of all patriotic themes that most attracted him; Virginian and other Voyages lay very close to his heart; and in certain sonnets to his lady lies his only imperishable work. ”

“ Courthope has said that he lacked loftiness and resolution of artistic purpose; without these, we ask, how could a man, not lavishly dowered with poetry in his soul, have achieved so much of it? It was his very fixity and loftiness of purpose, his English stubbornness and doggedness of resolution that enabled him to surmount so many obstacles of style and metre, of subject and thought. ”

“ And thus, whilst Beautie on her beauty gazed,
Who then, yet liuing, deemd she had been dying,
And yet in death some hope of life espying,
At her owne rare perfections so amazed;
Twixt ioy and griefe, yet with a smyling frowning,
The glorious sun-beames of her eyes bright shining,
And shee, in her owne destiny diuining,
Threw in herselfe, to saue herselfe by drowning;
The Well of Nectar, pau'd with pearle and gold,
Where shee remaines for all eyes to behold. ”

“ They now to fight are gone,
Armour on Armour shone,
Drumme now to Drumme did grone,
60To heare, was wonder;
That with the Cryes they make,
The very Earth did shake,
Trumpet to Trumpet spake,
Thunder to Thunder. ”

“ In the metre of the poem Drayton again echoes that of the older romances, as he did in Dowsabel. In the Quest of Cinthia, while ostensibly we come to the real world of mortals, we are really in a non-existent land of pastoral convention, in the most pseudo-Arcadian atmosphere in which Drayton ever worked. ”

“ O my Mertilla doe not praise
10These Lampes so dimly burning,
Such sad and sullen lights as these
Were onely made for mourning:
Their obiects are the barren Rocks
With aged Mosse o'r shaded;
Now whilst the Spring layes forth her Locks
With blossomes brauely braded.
[Pg 192] Mertilla. O Cloris, Can there be a Spring,
O my deare Nimph, there may not,
Wanting thine eyes it forth to bring,
20Without which Nature cannot:
Say what it is that troubleth thee
Encreast by thy concealing,
Speake; sorrowes many times we see
Are lesned by reuealing. ”

“ Quite the most striking feature of the Eclogues, especially in their later form, is their bold attempt at greater realism, at a breaking-away from the conventional images and scenery.
Having paid his tribute to one poetic fashion, Drayton in 1594 fell in with the prevailing craze for sonneteering, and published Ideas Mirrour, a series of fifty-one 'amours' or sonnets, with two prefatory poems, one by Drayton and one by an unknown, signing himself Gorbo il fidele. ”

“ It is the face of one who has not emerged unscathed from the world's conflict, but has attained to a certain calm, a measure of tranquillity, a portion of content, who has learnt the lesson that there is a soul of goodness in things evil. ”

“ Herrick's pieces are extraordinary combinations of the idea of 'King of Shadows', with a reality fantastically sober: the poems are steeped in moonlight. In Drayton all is clear day, or the most unromantic of nights; though everything is charming, there is no attempt at idealization, little of the higher faculty of imagination; but great realism, and much play of fancy. Herrick's verses were written by Cobweb and Moth together, Drayton's by Puck. Granting, however, the initial deficiency in subtlety of charm, the whole poem is inimitably graceful and piquant. ”

“ In this with State, I hope I doe not deale,
This onely tends the Muses common-weale.
What canst thou hope, or looke for from his pen,
Who liues with beasts, though in the shapes of men,
And what a poore few are we honest still,
And dare to be so, when all the world is ill. ”

“ Doron. O Boy how thy abundant vaine
Euen like a Flood breaks from thy braine,
Nor can thy Muse be gaged.
Dorilus. Why nature forth did neuer bring
A man that like to me can sing,
If once I be enraged.
Doron. Why Dorilus I in my skill
Can make the swiftest Streame stand still,
Nay beare back to his springing.
[Pg 180] 60Dorilus. And I into a Trance most deepe
Can cast the Birds that they shall sleepe
When fain'st they would be singing.
Doron. Why Dorilus thou mak'st me mad,
And now my wits begin to gad,
But sure I know not whither. ”

“ Humour is observable first, perhaps, in the Owle (1604) ; then in the Ode to his Rival (1619) ; and later in the Nymphidia, Shepheards Sirena, and Muses Elyzium. The second Nymphal shows us the quiet laughter, the humorous twinkle, with which Drayton writes at times. The subject is an [Greek: agôn] or contest between two shepherds for the affections of a nymph called Lirope: Lalus is a vale-bred swain, of refined and elegant manners, skilled, nevertheless, in all manly sports and exercises; Cleon, no less a master in physical prowess, was nurtured by a hind in the mountains ”

“ And my soule then obtaine which so my soule desireth.
Were not Inuention stauld, treading Inuentions maze,
Or my swift-winged Muse tyred by too hie flying;
Did not perfection still on her perfection gaze,
Whilst Loue (my Phoenix bird) in her owne flame is dying,
Inuention and my Muse, perfection and her loue,
Should teach the world to know the wonder that I proue.
Amour 18
Some, when in ryme they of their Loues doe tell,
With flames and lightning their exordiums paynt:
Some inuocate the Gods, some spirits of Hell,
And heauen, and earth doe with their woes acquaint. ”

“ Faire stood the Wind for France,
When we our Sayles aduance,
Nor now to proue our chance,
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the Mayne,
At Kaux, the Mouth of Sene,
With all his Martiall Trayne,
Landed King Harry. ”

“ Of Drayton's three known portraits the earliest shows him at the age of thirty-six, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery. A look of quiet, speculative melancholy seems to pervade it; there is, as yet, no moroseness, no evidence of severe conflict with the world, no shadow of stress or of doubt. The second and best-known portrait shows us Drayton at the age of fifty, and was engraved by Hole, as a frontispiece to the poems of 1619. Here a notable change has come over the face; the mouth is hardened, and depressed at the corners through disappointment and disillusionment ”

“ A world to see, yet how he ioyd to heare
The dainty grasse make musicke with her feete.
But my most meruaile was when from the skyes,
So Comet-like, each starre aduanc'd her lyght,
As though the heauen had now awak'd her eyes,
And summond Angels to this blessed sight.
No clowde was seene, but christalline the ayre,
Laughing for ioy upon my louely fayre.
Amour 26
Cupid, dumbe-Idoll, peeuish Saint of loue,
No more shalt thou nor Saint nor Idoll be;
No God art thou, a Goddesse shee doth proue,
Of all thine honour shee hath robbed thee.
Thy Bowe, halfe broke, is peec'd with old desire ”

“ And heere to thee he sacrifiz'd his teares.
Fayre Arden, thou my Tempe art alone,
And thou, sweet Ankor, art my Helicon.
Amour 14
Looking into the glasse of my youths miseries,
I see the ugly face of my deformed cares,
With withered browes, all wrinckled with dispaires,
That for my mis-spent youth the tears fel from my eyes.
Then, in these teares, the mirror of these eyes,
Thy fayrest youth and Beautie doe I see
Imprinted in my teares by looking still on thee:
Thus midst a thousand woes ten thousand joyes arise. ”