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XLIII.

AN ODE

TO JAMES EARL OF DESMOND.1

HERE art thou, Genius? I should use
Thy present aid: arise Invention,

Wake, and put on the wings of Pindar's
Muse,

To tower with my intention

High as his mind, that doth advance
Her upright head, above the reach of chance,
Or the times envý.
Cynthius, I apply

My bolder numbers to thy golden lyre:
O then inspire

Thy priest in this strange rapture! heat my brain
With Delphic fire,

That I may sing my thoughts in some unvulgar strain.

1 One of our author's earliest pieces. "It was written," (the folio says,) "in queen Elizabeth's time, since lost, and recovered." This earl was, I believe, the son of Gerald, sixteenth earl of Desmond, a most powerful nobleman, and a formidable rebel, who gave Elizabeth a world of uneasiness. He was, however, mastered at length, and his vast possessions, which extended over several counties, were in 1582 forfeited to the crown. His son James, the person, I presume, to whom this ode was addressed, was restored in blood and honour in 1600. From the allusions to his state of disfavour, and the call upon him to continue in his loyalty, and wait the reward of his virtue, the poem must have been written before that period. There is something prophetic in the last

stanza:

"If I auspiciously divine,

As my hope tells-then our fair Phoebe's shine
Shall light those places

With lustrous graces

Where darkness, with her gloomy-scepter'd hand,
Doth now command."

Rich beam of honour, shed your light
On these dark rhymes, that my affection
May shine, through every chink, to every sight,
Graced by your reflection!

Then shall my verses, like strong charms,
Break the knit circle of her stony arms,
That holds your spirit,

And keeps your merit

Lock'd in her cold embraces, from the view
Of eyes more true,

Who would with judgment search, searching conclude,

As prov'd in you,

True noblêsse. Palm grows straight, though handled ne'er so rude.

Nor think yourself unfortunate;
If subject to the jealous errors

Of politic pretext, that wries a state,

Sink not beneath these terrors :
But whisper, O glad innocence,
Where only a man's birth is his offence;
Or the disfavour

Of such as savour

Nothing, but practise upon honour's thrall.
O virtue's fall!

When her dead essence, like the anatomy
In Surgeons' hall,

Is but a statist's theme to read phlebotomy.

Let Brontes, and black Steropes,

Sweat at the forge, their hammers beating; Pyracmon's hour will come to give them ease, Though but while the metal's heating: And, after all the Ætnæan ire,

Gold, that is perfect, will outlive the fire.
For fury wasteth,

As patience lasteth.

No armour to the mind! he is shot-free
From injury,

That is not hurt; not he, that is not hit;
So fools, we see,

Oft scape an imputation, more through luck than wit. But to yourself, most loyal lord,

(Whose heart in that bright sphere flames
clearest,

Though many gems be in your bosom stor'd,
Unknown which is the dearest.)
If I auspiciously divine,

As my hope tells, that our fair Phoebe's shine,2
Shall light those places

With lustrous graces,

Where darkness, with her gloomy scepter'd hand,
Doth now command;

O then, my best-best lov'd let me importune,
That you will stand,

As far from all revolt, as you are now from fortune.

XLIV.

AN ODE.

IGH-SPIRITED friend,

I send nor balms, nor corsives to your wound;

Your faith hath found

A gentler, and more agile hand, to tend
The cure of that which is but corporal,

And doubtful days, which were nam'd critical,

2 Our fair Phoebe's shine.] Whalley corrupted this into fair Phœbus' shine. Fair is not the best epithet for the god; but he did not see the author's meaning, nor that the allusion was to "the beautified" Elizabeth, who loved to be flattered with the appella tion of Phabe or Diana.

Have made their fairest flight,
And now are out of sight.

Yet doth some wholsome physic for the mind,
Wrapt in this paper lie,

Which in the taking if you misapply,

Your covetous hand,

You are unkind.

Happy in that fair honour it hath gain'd,
Must now be rein'd.

True valour doth her own renown command
In one full action; nor have you now more
To do, than be a husband of that store.
Think but how dear you bought

This same which you have caught,

Such thoughts will make you more in love with

truth:

'Tis wisdom, and that high,

For men to use their fortune reverently,

Even in youth.

XLV.

AN ODE.

ELEN, did Homer never see

Thy beauties, yet could write of thee?
Did Sappho, on her seven-tongued lute,
So speak, as yet it is not mute,"

Of Phaon's form? or doth the boy,

In whom Anacreon once did joy,

3

as yet it is not mute, &c.] From Horace :

Spirat adhuc amor,

Vivuntque commissi calores

Eolia fidibus puellæ.

Nec si quid olim lusit Anacreon,

Delevit atas, &c.

Lie drawn to life in his soft verse,
As he whom Maro did rehearse ?
Was Lesbia sung by learn'd Catullus,
Or Delia's graces by Tibullus?
Doth Cynthia, in Propertius' song,
Shine more than she the stars among?
Is Horace his each love so high
Rapt from the earth, as not to die;
With bright Lycoris, Gallus' choice,
Whose fame hath an eternal voice?
Or hath Corinna, by the name
Her Ovid gave her, dimm'd the fame
Of Cæsar's daughter, and the line
Which all the world then styled divine?
Hath Petrarch since his Laura raised
Equal with her? or Ronsart praised
His new Cassandra 'bove the old,
Which all the fate of Troy foretold?
Hath our great Sidney, Stella set
Where never star shone brighter yet?
Or Constable's ambrosiac muse

Made Dian not his notes refuse ?4

4 Or Constable's ambrosiac muse

Made Dian not his notes refuse?] This author, though honour'd with so ample a testimony from Jonson, is almost unknown in this age.

"Henry Constable," in the words of Antony Wood, “was a great master of the English tongue; and there was no gentleman of our nation who had a more pure, quick, and higher delivery of conceit than he witness, among all others, that sonnet of his before the poetical translation called the Furies, made by king James the first of England, while he was king of the Scots. He hath also several sonnets extant, written to sir Philip Sidney; some of which are set before the Apology for Poetry, written by the said knight." This author flourished in the reign of queen Elizabeth. WHAL.

Antony's taste in poetry was not very refined, and he did not therefore discover that his author (Edmund Bolton) had unluckily fixed upon one of Constable's worst sonnets. The Diana of which Jonson speaks, was published in 1594. Constable seems to have been the most voluminous sonnet-writer of those sonneteering times; and to have acquired a reputation rather more than equal to his

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