Though some churls at our mirth repine, Now every lad is wondrous trim, Young men and maids and girls and boys And you anon shall by their noise Rank misers now do sparing shun, And dogs thence with whole shoulders run, The country folk themselves advance, For Crowdy-mutton's come out of France, Ned Swash hath fetched his bands from pawn, And all his best apparel; Brisk Nell hath bought a ruff of lawn With droppings of the barrel. And those that hardly all the year Had bread to eat or rags to wear, Will have both clothes and dainty fare * The wenches with their wassail-bowls The boys are come to catch the owls, Our kitchen-boy hath broke his box, Our honest neighbours come by flocks, On those great waters now I am, 2 A stirring courser now I sit, A headstrong steed I ride, That champs and foams upon the bit The softest whistling of the winds Doth make him gallop fast; 3 Take Thou, oh Lord! the reins in hand, Assume our Master's room; Vouchsafe Thou at our helm to stand, Trim Thou the sails, and let good speed Sound Thou the channels at our need, And anchor for us cast. 4 A fit and favourable wind Or lackey by our side. From sudden gusts, from storms, from sands, From shallows, rocks, and pirates' hands, 5 Preserve us from the wants, the fear, But chiefly from our sins, which are And for Thy mercies let us give FOR SUMMER TIME. I Now the glories of the year 3 Walks and ways which winter marr'd Warmth enough the sun doth lend us, From his heat the shades defend us; And thereby we share in these Safety, profit, pleasure, ease. 4 Other blessings, many more, THE PRAYER OF OLD AGE [Third part of Hallelujah.] As this my carnal robe grows old, Soil'd, rent, and worn by length of years, So shall my rest be safe and sweet Their essence then shall be divine, This muddy flesh shall starlike shine, And God shall that fresh youth restore Which will abide for evermore. GILES FLETCHER. [BORN about 1588, died 1623. Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death was published in 1640.] Giles, the brother of Phineas, and cousin of John Fletcher, is one of the chief poets of what may be called the Spenserian School, which 'flourished' in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. Spenser and Chaucer were the supreme names in nondramatic poetry till Milton arose; and in the Jacobean period the Plantagenet poet was eclipsed by the Elizabethan; and thus it was to Spenser that the lesser poetic spirits of the age looked up to as their master, and upon their writings his influence is deeply impressed. Amongst these retainers of 'Colin' must be counted Milton when young, before he had developed his own style and become himself an original power, himself a master; and not the least of the interests that distinguish Giles Fletcher and his fellow Spenserians is that Milton extended to them the study and attention which he gave with no ordinary sympathy to 'our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus and Aquinas.' These words of Milton's suggest some leading characteristics of the Spenserian school. It too proposed to be 'sage and serious.' It inclined indeed to be didactic. In that notorious production, 'The Purple Island,' we have in fact a lecture on Anatomy. More commonly its purpose was directly ethical; and it must be allowed that the artist is at times lost in the moralist. Giles Fletcher is eminently a religious poet-in the technical sense of the word, as happily also in the more general sense. He deals with Christian themes: 'Christ's Victory in Heaven,' 'Christ's Victory on Earth,' 'Christ's Triumph over Death,' 'Christ's Triumph after Death'; and it is his special distinction, that in handling such themes he does not sink into a mere rhyming dogmatist, but writes with a genuine enthusiasm and joy. For certainly what has commonly been written for 'religious' poetry has been 'religious' rather than poetical. Its orthodoxy may have |