All these in me no means can move, To come to thee and be thy love.

But, could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need;
Then these delights my mind might move,
To live with thee, and be thy love.

Thus prayed he: with purple wings up-flew,
In golden weed, the morning's lusty queen,
Begilding with the radiant beams she threw
His helm, the harness, and the mountain green:
Upon his breast and forehead gently blew
The air, that balm and nardus breathed unseen;
And o'er his head, let down from clearest skies,
A cloud of pure and precious dew there flies.

Edward Fairfax.

The first edition of Fairfax's celebrated translation of Tasso's "Jerusalem Delivered" is dated 1600; the second, 1624. Dryden ranked Fairfax with Spenser as a master of English; and Waller derived from him, according to his own confession, the harmony of his numbers. The date of Fairfax's birth is unknown, but was probably about 1564. He was the natural son of Sir Thomas Fairfax, and had a long and happy life amidst rural scenes. He was living in 1631. The date of his death is not known. He wrote a work on "Demonology," which was not printed until 1859.

RINALDO AT MOUNT OLIVET.

It was the time when 'gainst the breaking day
Rebellious night yet strove, and still repined;
For in the east appeared the morning gray,
And yet some lamps in Jove's high palace shined,
When to Mount Olivet he took his way,
And saw, as round about his eyes he twined,
Night's shadows hence, from thence the morning's
shine,

This bright, that dark; that earthly, this divine.

Thus to himself he thought: How many bright And 'splendent lamps shine in heaven's temple high!

Day hath his golden sun, her moon the night,
Her fixed and wandering stars the azure sky:
So framed all by their Creator's might,
That still they live and shine, and ne'er will die,
Till in a moment, with the last day's brand,
They burn, and with them burn sea, air, and land.

Thus as be muséd, to the top he went,
And there kneeled down with reverence and fear;
His eyes upon heaven's eastern face he bent;
His thoughts above all heavens uplifted were :--
"The sins and errors which I now repent,
Of my unbridled youth, O Father dear,
Remember not, but let thy mercy fall,
And purge my faults and my offences all."

William Shakspeare.

The Baptismal Register of Stratford-on-Avon contains the following entry: "April 26, 1564. Gulielmus, filius Johannes Shakespeare." The house in which the poet was born stands, in a restored condition, in Henley Street; and the conjectured room of his birth is scribbled over-walls, ceiling, windows-with thousands of names. His father, a wool-comber, though not opulent, seems to have been in good circumstances, to have had property in land and houses, and to have held the highest official dignities of the town. But probably a short course in the Stratford grammar-school was all the regular education Shakspeare ever received. He married, at the age of eighteen, Anne Hathaway, seven or eight years older than himself. Two or three years afterward he removed to London, where he rapidly acquired a large property in more than one theatre. We do not know the order in which his plays were produced, but he soon vindicated the immense superiority of his genius by universal popularity. He was the companion of the nobles and the wits of the time, and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth herself, at whose request some of his pieces were written. The wealth which he realized enabled him, comparatively early in life, to retire from his professional career. There had been born to him a son and two daughters. He had purchased an estate in the vicinity of his native town, but he enjoyed it only four years. He died of fever in 1616, aged fifty-two.

The works of Shakspeare consist of thirty-seven plays, tragedies, comedies, and histories; the poems, “Venus and Adonis," and "Tarquin and Lucrece," with a collection of sonnets, or, rather, fourteen - lined poems, of exquisite beauty and variety, each consisting of three quatrains of alternate rhyme and a closing couplet. His want of care in preserving and authenticating the productions of his genius before his death has been supposed to indicate either his indifference to fame or the absence of a knowledge of the magnitude of what he had achieved; and yet there are expressions in his sonnets that seem to imply a sense of his intellectual superiority. The subject of his dramatic and poetical character is so vast that it would be idle here to attempt its analysis.

His Sonnets represent him in the full maturity of manhood, and at the height of his fame. They were probably written between the years 1595 and 1603, when he was living at Stratford in dignified retirement. Of these sonnets Trench says: "They are so heavily laden with meaning, so double-shotted (if one may so speak) with thought, so penetrated and pervaded with a repressed

passion, that, packed as all this is into narrowest limits, it sometimes imparts no little obscurity to them; and they often require to be heard or read, not once, but many times-in fact, to be studied-before they reveal to us all the treasures of thought and feeling which they contain." These remarkable and mysterious sonnets are one hundred and fifty-four in number, and, with the exception of twenty-eight, are addressed to some male person, to whom the poet refers in a style of affection, love, and idolatry almost unnatural; remarkable, even in the reign of Elizabeth, for morbid extravagance and enthusiasm. The sonnets were first printed in 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, a publisher of the day, who prefixed to the volume the following enigmatical dedication: "To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, Mr. W. H., all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet, wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth, T. T." The "W. H." alluded to by Thorpe has been conjectured to be William Herbert, afterward Earl of Pembroke, who, as appears from the folio of 1623, was one of Shakspeare's patrons. This conjecture has received the assent of Mr. Hallam and others. Many theories, none satisfactory, have been broached to account for these exceptional productions.

It has been truly remarked by an anonymous writer that no man of whom we have any knowledge in literature ever had, like Shakspeare, "the faculty of pouring out on all occasions such a flood of the richest and deepest language; no man ever said such splendid extempore things on all subjects universally. That excessive fluency which astonished Ben Jonson when he listened to Shakspeare in person astonishes the world yet. He was the greatest master of expression that literature has known. Indeed, by his powers of expression he has beggared and forestalled posterity. Such lightness and ease in the manner, and such prodigious wealth and depth in the matter, are combined in no other writer."

SIGH NO MORE.

FROM "MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING."

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever;

One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never: Then sigh not so,

But let them go,

And be you blithe and bouny; Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no mo,

Of dumps so dull and heavy; The fraud of men was ever so, Since summer first was leavy:

Then sigh not so,

But let them go,

And be you blithe and bonny; Converting all your sounds of woe Into hey nonny, nonny.

ARIEL'S SONG.

FROM "THE TEMPEST."

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry;
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily:

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now,

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

SILVIA.

FROM "THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA."

Who is Silvia? What is she,

That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she,

The heavens such grace did lend her, That she might admiréd be.

Is she kind as she is fair,

For beauty lives with kindness? Love doth to her eyes repair,

To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there.

Then to Silvia let us sing,

That Silvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing, Upon the dull earth dwelling: To her let us garlands bring.

MAN'S INGRATITUDE.

FROM "AS YOU LIKE IT."

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind

As man's ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then heigh-ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, Thou dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot:

Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;

Thou hast finished joy and moan: All lovers young, all lovers must Consign to thee, and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!

THE SONG OF WINTER.
FROM "LOVE'S LABOR LOST."

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipped, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who,

To-whit, to-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

CLOTEN'S SERENADE.

FROM "CYMBELINE."

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,

And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty bin,
My lady sweet, arise;

Arise, arise!

SONNETS.

XVIII.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

ΧΧΧ.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's

waste:

Then can I drown an eye unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since cancelled woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanéd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before:
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored, and sorrows end.

XXXIII.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,
Kissing with golden face the meadows green,
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy,—
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face,
And from the forlorn world his visage hide,
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,
With all-triumphant splendor on my brow;
But, out, alack! he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.
Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suus of the world may stain, when heaven's sun
staineth.

LIV.

Oh, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odor which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms' have full as deep a die,
As the perfuméd tincture of the roses;
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,
When summer's breath their maskéd buds discloses;
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwooed and unrespected fade;
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors made;
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.

LV.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unwept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars's sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find

room,

1 Canker-blooms are from the canker-roses.

Even in the eyes of all posterity,

That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.

LX.

Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

XC.

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now:
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss.

Ah! do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite;
But in the onset come: so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might;
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.

XCVIII.

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him:
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you; you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play:

CX.

Alas! 'tis true I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view;

CXLVI.

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, Fooled by those rebel powers that thee array,

Made old offences of affectious new:

Most true it is that I have looked on truth
Askance and strangely; but, by all above,
These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love.
Now all is done, save what shall have no end:
Mine appetite I nevermore will grind
On newer proof, to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confined.
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,
Even to thy pure aud most, most loving breast.

CXI.

Oh, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide,

Than public meaus, which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed,
Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eysell 'gainst my strong infection :'
No bitterness that I will bitter think,
Nor double penauce, to correct correction.
Pity me, then, dear friend; and I assure ye,
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

CXVI.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

Oh no! it is an ever-fixéd mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, altho' his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and checks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
Bat bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

↑ Egell is an old word for vinegar. There seems to be little Cos that in this and the preceding sonnet Shakspeare expresses some of his own honest feelings respecting himself and

capation of player, in which he must have encountered ach that was humiliating, if not demoralizing.

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end?
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store.
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed,-without be rich no more.
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men;
And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

CXLVII.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner than despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated; as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream:
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

ULYSSES'S ADVICE TO ACHILLES.
FROM "TROILUS AND CRESSIDA."

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes :
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright: To have done is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail,

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;
For honor travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but goes abreast: keep, then, the path;
For emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue: If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost;-