by the so-called 'Metaphysical' influence of his time, but at heart a true saint and a true poet. And here, above all, are the mystics who alone. would have sufficed to make our seventeenth century immortal. Vaughan and Traherne touch strings which no hand set vibrating again until Wordsworth: they are at one with him in their devotion, their passionate receptivity, their living sense of the immanence of God in nature: the difference is that they are absorbed in the ecstasy which after long and painful labour he learned to control. The boyish visions which he describes in the Prelude and in Tintern Abbey are of the same light with which their poetry is saturated: what he added was the intellectual power by which imagination itself was mastered and ennobled. Crashaw is a mystic of a very different order; more personal and sensuous, more deeply imbued with Italian softness and colour: it was Vaughan and Traherne who, in a questioning age, stood forth as prophets, and if they spoke with stammering lips, yet looked with unsealed eyes into the heart of the universe.

Meanwhile, along the lower slopes, nature was beginning to reveal herself to the poet. Denham painted the landscape from the easy summit of Cooper's Hill, and took the placid flow of the Thames at once for his subject and for his model : Andrew Marvell wandered in a green shade among the garden alleys or stood by the hazel thicket to observe the hatching throstle's gleaming eye'; the feeling was intermittent, it was selfconscious, it was tuned to one uniform key of smiling comfort, but it showed an awakening interest in the country for its own sake, not merely as the background or setting of a human drama.

1 See Johnson's essay on Cowley for the origin of this unfortunate name. It is commonly applied to Donne, Cowley, Denham, and Waller.

It may be worth adding that the authors who are cited in the present chapter cover a period of more than a century. Donne was born in 1573, Vaughan died in 1695; the one was a boy of eighteen when Shakespeare produced his first play, the other was still living when Shadwell succeeded Dryden as poet laureate. Their work was written amid the shock of many conflicting principles-Cavalier and Roundhead, Commonwealth and Restoration, Romanist claims and Protestant opposition. It is little wonder that they show a wide variety both of topic and of treatment. Yet they all help to illustrate the development of our national character; their skill of craftsmanship undoubtedly trained the hands of their successors, and the true ideas which they put forth germinated in the fullness of time and blossomed into some of the noblest poetry that we possess.

JOHN DONNE (1573-1631) was the son of a London ironmonger, and, on his mother's side, the grandson of John Heywood the epigrammatist. Through her he was also connected with Sir Thomas More. He was brought up in the Roman faith, and was sent to Hart Hall, Oxford, at the age of eleven-boys under sixteen not being required to take the oaths which acknowledged the royal supremacy. In 1592 he was entered at Lincoln's Inn, where he soon became intimate with the chief wits and poets of the day. In 1596 he took part in the expedition of Essex to Cadiz. On his return (August, 1596) he was appointed secretary to the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton. A large number of his poems, probably including all the satires, were written during the period of his secretaryship. In 1600 he was secretly married to Anne More, Lady Egerton's niece. Her father, Sir George More, was furious, and caused Donne to lose his post and to be imprisoned for a short time. After his release he fell upon evil days, and for some years had a hard struggle to support his wife and the twelve children who were born to them. Lucy Countess of Bedford befriended him, and at last he attracted the attention of Morton, the most

distinguished of the royal chaplains, and of James himself. Morton was a great controversialist, and Donne's learning proved of valuable assistance to him. He was offered immediate preferment if he would take Orders. For some time religious scruples stood in his way; but he was ordained in 1615, was appointed one of the court chaplains, and soon became famous as a preacher. He was made Reader of Lincoln's Inn; was sent with Lord Doncaster on his mission to Germany; and finally, in 1621, was made Dean of St. Paul's, and was given in addition the livings of Blunham in Bedfordshire and St. Dunstan-in-the-West. His last sermon, one of the most

famous, was preached on Ash Wednesday, 1631.

Among his chief works are: Pseudo-Martyr (1610); two elegies entitled An Anatomy of the World (1611); The Second Progress of the Soul (1612); poems (published 1633), including love poems and satires; Juvenilia, or certain Paradoxes and Problems (1633); and a large number of sermons.

EPITHALAMION

From AN EPITHALAMION, OR MARRIAGE SONG ON THE LADY ELIZABETH AND COUNT PALATINE BEING

MARRIED ON ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

HAIL, Bishop Valentine! whose day is this;
All the air is thy diocese,

And all the chirping choristers

And other birds are thy parishioners:

Thou marriest every year

The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher;
Thou makest the blackbird speed as soon

As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon;
The husband cock looks out and straight is sped,
And meets his wife, which brings her feather-bed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine;

This day, which might inflame thyself, old Valentine.

10

THE MESSAGE

SEND home my long-strayed eyes to me,
Which, oh! too long have dwelt on thee;
Yet since they there have learned such ill,
Such forced fashions,

And false passions

That they be

Made by thee

Fit for no good sight, keep them still.

Send home my harmless heart again,

Which no unworthy thought could stain:
But if it be taught by thine

10

To make jestings

Of protestings

And break both

Word and oath,

Keep it, for then 'tis none of mine.

Yet send me back my heart and eyes

That I may know, and see thy lies,

And may laugh and joy when thou
Art in anguish

And dost languish

For some one

That will none,

Or prove as false as thou art now.

20

ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674) was the son of a goldsmith in Cheapside. His father died early, and Robert was left to the guardianship of his uncle, William-afterwards Sir William -Herrick. He went to Cambridge, where he was constantly in debt. In 1616 he migrated from St. John's College to Trinity Hall in order to study law. He abandoned the law after a few years, took Orders, and in 1629 was admitted to the

living of Dean Prior in Devonshire. Wood says he 'became much beloved by the gentry in those parts for his florid and witty discourses'. In 1647 he was driven from his living, and settled in London for a time. He returned to Devonshire in 1662, and spent the remainder of his life there.

Many of his poems appeared anonymously in various miscellanies. In 1639 appeared An Addition of some excellent Poems to Shakespeare's Poems, by another Gentleman'. The two most important collections of his poems are Hesperides (1648) and Noble Numbers (written 1647).

TO DAFFODILS

FAIR daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the evensong;

And, having prayed together, we

Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,

As you, or anything.

We die

As your hours do, and dry

Away

Like to the summer's rain ;

Or as the pearls of morning's dew,

Ne'er to be found again.

10

20