CCCCLXI

IN THE SHADOWS.

3

OBER'S gold is dim—the forests rot,

ОСТОВІ

The weary rain falls ceaseless, while the day

Is wrapped in damp. In mire of village way
The hedge-row leaves are stamped; and, all forgot,
The broodless nest sits visible in the thorn.
Autumn, among her drooping marigolds,

Weeps all her garnered sheaves, and empty folds,
And dripping orchards-plundered and forlorn.
The season is a dead one, and I die!

No more, no more for me the Spring shall make
A resurrection in the earth, and take

The death from out her heart-O God, I die!
The cold throat-mist creeps nearer, till I breathe
Corruption. Drop, stark night, upon my death!

David GRAY

1838-1861

CCCCLXII

IE down, O dismal day! and let me live;

DIE

And come, blue deeps! magnificently strown
With coloured clouds-large, light, and fugitive-
By upper winds through pompous motions blown.
Now it is death in life-a vapour dense
Creeps round my window till I cannot see
The far snow-shining mountains, and the glens
Shagging the mountain-tops. O God! make free
This barren, shackled earth, so deadly cold-
Breathe gently forth Thy Spring, till Winter flies
In rude amazement, fearful and yet bold,
While she performs her 'customed charities.

I weigh the loaded hours till life is bare

O God! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air!

EE

OLIVER MADOX BROWN

1855-1874

234

N°

A Treasury of English Sonnets

CCCCLXIII

O more these passion-worn faces shall men's eyes
Behold in life. Death leaves no trace behind
Of their wild hate and wilder love, grown blind
In desperate longing, more than the foam which lies
Splashed up awhile where the showered spray descries
The waves whereto their cold limbs were resigned;
Yet ever doth the sea-wind's undefined

Vague wailing shudder with their dying sighs.

For all men's souls 'twixt sorrow and love are cast,
As on the earth each lingers his brief space,
While surely nightfall comes, where each man's face
In death's obliteration sinks at last

As a deserted wind-tossed sea's foam-trace

Life's chilled boughs emptied by death's autumn-blast.

NOTES

NOTES

Sir Thomas Wyat and the Earl of Surrey.

'In the latter end of the same kings raigne' (Henry VIII's), writes Puttenham, 'sprong up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th' elder & Henry Earle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude & homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile."1 The poems of Wyat and Surrey, fellowsingers whose 'sweet breath,' more immediately than Dan Chaucer's, 'Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth,'

2

though extensively circulated in manuscript, and possibly on loose printed sheets also, during the lives of their authors, were not published in the ordinary sense of the word until 1557, when they appeared, with others, in Tottel's Miscellany. The two poets have often been elaborately compared, but by none better than Mr. Stopford Brooke, thus succinctly The subjects of Wyatt and Surrey were chiefly lyrical, and the fact that they imitated the same model has made some likeness between them. Like their personal characters, however, the poetry of Wyatt is the more thoughtful and the more strongly felt, but Surrey's has a sweeter movement and a livelier fancy. Both did this great thing for English verse-they chose an exquisite model, and in imitating it "corrected the ruggedness of English poetry."'s One consequence of this difference in character and temperament was that Wyat easily excelled

The Arte of English Poesie, 1589, Lib. i, chap. xxxi, p. 48.

Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other. 1557.

English Literature Primer, 1876, p. 58.