All the other sounds, we hear, The world be muffled in a shade! To meet the sacrificer's knife; Sad bell-weather to the rest." The poem of Narcissus consists of 131 six-lined stanzas, and contains a large proportion of poetical passages, and many very harmonious verses. * This poem begins as follows: 1. "Fair Echo, rise! sick-thoughted nymph, awake; 2. If not the birds, who 'bout the coverts fly, And with their warbles charm the neighbouring air ¿ If not the sun, whose new embroidery Makes rich the leaves, that in thy arbours are, Can make thee rise; yet, lovesick nymph, away! Thy young Narcissus is abroad to day. By the motto Hac Olim, it is probable this is the same poem, as was originally published under the title of Echo, or the Infortunate Lovers, 1618, 8vo, See CENS. LIT. II. p. 382. 3. Pursue 3. Pursue him, timorous maid: he moves apace; Favonius waits to play with thy loose hair, And help thy flight; see, how the drooping grass Courts thy soft tread, thou child of sound and air; 4. If thy face move not, let thy eyes express Some rhetoric of thy tears to make him stay; 6. If neither love, thy beauty, nor thy tears Invent some other way to make him know He need not hunt, that can have such a deer; The Queen of Love did once Adonis woo; But hard of soul, with no persuasions won, He felt the curse of his disdain too soon. 7. In vain I counsel her to put on wing; Sits silently attending to her love; But round about, to catch his voice with care, every shade and tree she hid a snare. In 8. Now do the huntsmen fill the air with noise, And their shrill horns chafe her delighted ear, Which with loud accents give the woods a voice, She She hears the jolly tunes; but every strain, 9. Rous'd is the game; pursuit doth put on wings; Through which he quaintly steals his shine away; 10. Him, Echo, led by her affections, found,. Joy'd, you may guess, to reach him with her eye; But more, to see him rise without a wound, Who yet obscures herself behind some tree: He, vext, exclaims, and asking Where am I?' The unseen virgin answers, 'Here am I!' 11. • Some Guide from hence! will no man hear?' he cries: She answers in her passion, 'O man, hear!' 'I die, I die!' say both; and thus she tries With frequent answers to entice his ear And person to her court, more fit for love, He tracts the sound, and finds her odorous grove. 12. The way he trod, was paved with violets Whose azure leaves do warm their naked stalks: In their white double ruffs the daisies jet, And primroses are scatter'd in the walks ; Whose pretty mixture in the ground declares 13. Twe 13. Two rows of elms ran with proportion'd grace, The friendly vines their loved barks embrace, While folding tops the chequer'd ground-work hides. Here oft the tired sun himself would rest, Riding his glorious circuit to the west. 14. From hence delight conveys him unawares 15. Not far from hence, near an harmonious brook, 16. But Time upon his wings had brought the boy Thorough a small window of eglantine; 17. With confidence she sometimes would go out And boldly meet Narcissus in the way: And chide her over-rash resolve away. Her Her heart with over-charge of love must break; Oldys, in his MS. notes on Langbaine, says, "Shirley was born in the city of London, near Stock's Market, 1594. Bred up at Catherine Hall in Cambridge, (where he studied some years) with one Thomas Bancroft, as this poet tells us in his Epigrams, 4to. 1639: which Bancroft was of Swarston in Derbyshire, where his father and mother were buried, on whom he has an epitaph also, and an enigma on his birth-place. Shirley died in the parish of St. Giles's in the Fields, having been burnt out of his habitation in Fleet-street, in the great fire 1666.” "In his Dramatic Interlude, The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for the armour of Achilles, is the fine song, which old Bowman used to sing to K. Charles, and which he has often sung to me. "The glories of our birth and state," &c. and therein also the fine lines, "Your heads must come To the cold tomb! Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust." * ART. XIII. The First Four Books of Virgil's Eneis, translated into English heroical verse, by Richard Stanyhurst, with other poetical devises thereto annexed. 8vo. At London imprinted by See it in Percy's Reliques; and in Elia's Specimens, III. 106. VOL. IV. сс Henrie |