English lyrics, Chaucer to Poe. 1340-1809. Selected and arranged by W. E. Henley

Preface

Beginning with Chaucer, this book should have ended with Tennyson. As it could not end with Tennyson, it begins with the Beginner of English Poetry, and ends, by a piece of chronological good luck, with the one American I know who, thus far, can claim fellowship with the greater English Poets. Its object is to present a fairly representative collection of such among the purely lyrical treasures of our tongue as were amassed between Chaucer and Poe. Whether or not it achieves that object is not, of course, for me to say. But I may be pardoned for pointing out that it has two features which I believe to be novel. Acting on the principle that verse in English is, ipso facto, English verse, and realising that the English Lyric has lived in Scotland when it was moribund, or worse, in England, I have included, with the work of the aforesaid American, examples of certain old-world Scots, nameless and other : not much read, I fear, in the land which gave them birth, but, as seems to me, worth reading any where.

Again, the Authorised Version is a monument of English Prose. But the inspiration and the effect of many parts of it are absolutely lyrical ; and on those parts I have drawn for such a series of achievements in lyrism as will be found, I trust, neither the least interesting nor the least persuasive group in an anthology which pretends to set forth none but the choicest among English lyrics. It is easy to tell a lyric when you see one. It is not so easy to say what a lyric is. ' Lyrical,' says Mr. Palgrave in his Preface to the best-read anthology in the language, has been — presumably, therefore, should be — ' held to imply that each Poem shall turn on some single thought, feeling, or situation.' I would rather say that unless 'thought,' and 'feeling,' and 'situation' all are single, and are all present, and so present that in the final result 'feeling'

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shall oblige us to forget the others, or at least to consider them as chiefly essential to its triumphing expression, that result is not a lyric. In Ruth, for instance, the situation may be described (perhaps) as ' single ' ; but the ' thought ' is so full of change, the ' feeling ' so placid and so impersonal, that to make Ruth a lyric is to make lyrics of most of the stories in lyrical forms we have. Again, both ' thought ' and ' situation ' are ' single ' in Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College ; but, though the intention of the thing is lyrical, it finds no place in this anthology, for the reason that, to me at least, it lacks that quality without which no piece of verse, whatever its appearance on the printed page, can ever be held a lyric. I mean the quality of emotion : or, as Mr. Palgrave calls it, ' feeling.' It is the absence of this quality, or its presence in the smallest doses, and these extremely disguised, which makes the lyrical output of the years between Rochester and Blake so scant in quantity and so poor in kind.

And this, as I believe, is rather due to a radical vice in the authors of that output than to the tyranny of any literary fashions in deference to which they may have worked. Distinction in speech, clarity of phrase, elegance of form, reserve in utterance — that these Augustan ideals, all essential to good verse in any age, are compatible, however mannered and made modish and so in a sense estranged, with true lyrism is shown in the work of Collins, and is shown there for the fundamental reason that Collins had what I must call the Lyrical Temperament, and was therefore, in fact as well as in design, a Lyric Poet. Apply this temperamental test to Marvell's Horatian Ode (257)> or Chaucer's Merciless Beauty (3), or Jonson's Epithalamy (161), or Herrick's To Daffodils (214), or Dunbar's Lament (4), or Keats's Belle Dame Sans Merci (400) — in fact to any number in this book, as I believe — and your result will be the same.

Apply it to anything of Addison's and Prior's and Shenstone's, and to well nigh everything of Pope's and Thomson's and Gay's, and your result is different. Marvell and those others had the Lyrical Temperament, and could be Lyrists at will ; Addison and those others lacked it, and could not. The nameless poet of The Twa Corbies (265) had it, and The Twa Corbies is unmatched among objective and impersonal lyrics. Southey, to take an example from the antipodes of letters — Southey had it not ; and you shall search his dozen volumes in vain for so much as a trace of it.

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9 There is plenty of verse in those volumes that would fain be lyrical if it could. But it never can ; for Southey was not thus gifted. And, just as there is little or nothing in all Shelley which has not at least the lyrical thrill, so there is never a lyric in all Southey. As I think, then, the specific attribute, the saving and essential virtue, of verse that is lyrical to ear and heart as distinguished from verse that is lyrical to the eye alone, is temperamental in origin and emotional in effect. If a poet have the Lyrical Tempera ment, his effect will be lyrical whenever, and in whatever form,1 he is moved to pass on an emotion, or a sequence of emotions, from himself to his hearers, whether present or to be, in the terms of art. The emotion thus distinguished may be grave, or gay, or anything you please.

It may soar to a rapture of supplication — as in Drayton's famous quatorzain (102) ; of gaiety — as in Green Grow the Rashes (326) ; of exultant vision and anticipation — as in Spenser's Epithalamion (76). Or it may decline upon such a mood of tender human feeling, half-generous and half-playful, as Con greve's False Though She Be (281) ; or on such a joyous yet desperate recognition of the fleeting excellence of life as Jordan's Careless Gallant (246) : — ' Let 's eat, drink, and play, ere the worms do corrupt us, For I say that Post Mortem Nulla Voluptas I Let 's deal with our damsels, that we may from thence Have broods to succeed us a hundred years hence.' 1 The Lyrical Temperament is above form, and is largely independent of it : for the reason that its output, whatever shape it assume, is inevitably a Lyric.

The complexity of Chaucer, in The Complaynt 0/ Mars, is bewildering, but its effect is lyrical ; so is that of the sumptuous and stately stanzas of Spenser's two great bridal songs ; and so is that of the curious rhythmus of Montgomerie's Banks 0/ Helicon (71). But, so too is that of what is in comparison the bell man's verse of Since First I Saw Your Face (150). Milton and Tennyson have shown, each in his own way, that the noblest lyrical effects are to be got out of new-created rhymeless rhythms and unrhyming heroic iambics. Then, Crashaw's loose-hung dithyrambs (248-50) are absolutely lyrical ; but so, on the other hand, are the elegant yet simple cadences of Ben Jonson's Drink to Me Only (157) and Queen and Huntress (153) ; so is the magical blending of in tensity with utter sweetness, music the loveliest with perfect strength, in some of Shakespeare's Sonnets (115-127).

And, to pass to an extreme instance, what is more lyrical in sound and substance and spirit than the passages which I have excerpted from the English Bible (27-69) ?

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10 But (and this is my contention) the result is ever a Lyric. The emotion projected may be touched with humour — as in so much of the true Burns's best (316, 319, 325) ; with the mystery and the romance of Life and Death— as in Proud Maisie (340) ; with modish extravagance— as in What Shall I Do (274) ; with drink— as in The Happy Trio (316) and in Vulcan, Contrive Me Such a Cup (284) ; with all the agonies and the gallantries of a mystical piety — as in Crashaw (248-50) ; with a right feeling for ' old unhappy far-off things '—as in Jean Elliot (297) and Dunbar (4) ; with wonder and terror— as in The Tiger (312) ; with a true man's weariness — as in We 7/ Go No More A-Roving (377) ; with a transforming sense of the picturesque in character and history — as in Bonny Dundee (347) and Donald Caird (345) — or of troubled and anxious happi ness — as in My Dear Mistress (257) ; with an overpowering apprehension of the great inevitable processes of nature — as in the Ode to the West Wind (381).

It may be hope, or remorse, or desire, or contemplation, or despair — any passion of which the human heart is capable. But, whatever its character and quality, there it must be, and it must be projected through a temperament. Or Lyric there is none. A single emotion temperamentally expressed in the terms of poetry — that is a Lyric. And note that the Lyrical Temperament has nothing whatever to do with the capacity for feeling. They may co-exist in a Lyric Poet — as they do in Shakespeare and Byron and Keats. But it is in nowise necessary that they should. What English-speaking man was ever, so far as we know, the prey of a more desperate passion and a more poignant sense of the greater issues than Swift ? And which of us, so far as we know, was ever more careless of those issues than Herrick?

Yet Herrick was an unique lyrist, and Swift was no lyrist at all ; and Swift could no more have written Bid Me to Live (212), or any song of Herrick's, than Herrick could have written Gulliver or the Direc tions to Servants, or any line of Swift's. It is a matter of, not genius but, gift. Fifty Herricks would not have made a Swift. But Herrick had the gift, and the greater man had not ; and Herrick is a master-lyrist, and Swift left never a lyric line. In the same way, we may take for granted that John son's capacity for feeling was certainly as great as, if not greater than, Milton's. Yet Johnson's essays in lyrical verse are frigid

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11 trifles,1 while Milton's Invocations to Sabrina (240) and to Echo (243), with Lycidas (242) and the Song for Comus (239), are lyrics whose essential quality is now as fresh, as clear, and as flawless as when it first took shape in enchanted words. We know nothing which will help my argument of either the man Lyly or the man Shirley. But we can see for ourselves that Shirley's share of the gift was greater than Lyly's, for Shirley could write such lyrics as O, Fly, My Soul (222) and Earth's Victories (223), while Lyly's best-known attempt at lyrism : — ' Cupid and my Campaspe played, 'etc. : — is plainly no lyric but an epigram. I might go on exampling the true Lyric and the false, the Lyric (that is) which is temperamental and the Lyric which is not ; but I think that I have done enough.

And if I add that I have seen things so essentially anti-lyrical, to me at least, as Bacon's : — ' The world 's a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span,' etc. '. — as Wordsworth's Simon Lee : — ' Few months of life has he in store, As he to you will tell, For still, the more he works, the more Do his weak ankles swell. My gentle Reader, I perceive How patiently you 've waited, And now I fear that you expect Some tale will be related ' : — and as Wotton's beautiful and famous epitaph : — ' He first deceased ; She for a little tried To live without him, liked it not, and died all quoted as Lyrics, I shall have said as much as I need to indicate the lines on which this book is done. To insist on the paramount importance of the Lyrical Tempera ment is not in any sense to diminish or deny the importance of ex ample and environment.

Both are such influences, indeed, that it is possible to conceive a Jonson who, writing in an age of circulating " I except the verses on Frank Levett : which should, perhaps, have found a place in this anthology.

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12 libraries, would put out his Alchymists and Epiccenes as novels, and a Dickens, who, the tune being set him by his time, would express the Pickwickians in the terms of drama, and send his Gamp to rival Mrs. Quickly on the boards. And that this is so the English Lyric shows as well as any form in which the literary genius of the race has ever expressed itself. A poet of immense genius, an artist unsurpassed (I take it) by any Englishman of any time, Chaucer wrote Lyrics, as he wrote everything that was writing in his time. But example and environment were against him, and, though he had the Lyrical Temperament, as (I believe) he had all the others, the forms imposed upon him were so complex, and the effects, as The Compleynt of Mars, he achieved in them are so remote, that I have been able to quote from him only two numbers whose intention and result are lyrical : together with a third for which he is responsible only in so far as he is author of the lovely narrative from which it is excerpted.

Chaucer dead, a hush fell on the English Muse. There was Henryson in Scotland, the Master's greatest pupil, an admirable poet — but no lyrist ; while in England there were only such founts of tedium as Lydgate and Gower and Hawes, and, till the coming of Dunbar, whose lyrical gift is shown, imperfectly but irresistibly, in my quotations from him (4-6), English Lyrics there were none. After Dunbar Skelton ; and with Skelton, rough and ragged as his verses are, a breath of true lyrism, which makes his songs in praise of Johanna Scoope and Isabel Pennell (I wish I could quote his Mannerly Margery, but — !) lyrically alive unto this day. With Skelton came the turn. The age of Henry VIII. was lyrically given ; and, if in the long run one think little of Wyatt, one re members that the King himself wrote verses, and sang them, one makes the best one can of the general lyrical drift of the collection called Tottel's Miscellany (I shall deal with the shining exception presently), and one rejoices in the quatrain which I have quoted from the Royal MS.

(19) as a true burst of temperament, a lyrical beginning which has never found its Burns. With this last I have grouped the anonymous numbers — well-meant, and more, in English ; well metricised, and more, in Scots — culled from Tottel and from that precious manuscript which James Bannatyne, an Edinburgh citizen, wrote in a time of pestilence (1568), when needs must he do something to keep his mind off the grisly work that

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13 was getting done outside. Signed or unsigned, however, there is nothing in The Bannatyne MS. (with the exception of 25, as to which see my Note) to lower the crest of Alexander Scott (14-17) : just as in the Miscellany there is none so brilliant as to be in any way comparable to the brilliancy of Surrey (9-11), 'Son of the Morn ing/ by whose execution such a blow was dealt to English letters as is scarce equalled by that they met in the murder of Marlowe. Come now the noble numbers — passionate, affecting, essentially lyrical — from one of the two greatest books in English. They are selected and repeated from the Authorised Version (1613), for that achievement in art is, like so much else that is perdurable in art, the outcome of a tradition, begun when Tyndale {Pentateuch, 1530 ; Jonah, 1531) and Coverdale (the Old and New Testaments, 1535) made the great body of Hebrew poetry and history and legend an English book.

Between Coverdale's Bible and the Authorised Version some six or seven translations, all widely read and each owing something to the others, were given to the English people ; so it is safe to say that the Authorised Version, unknown to Wyatt and Surrey and Scott, was known, in one or other of its early metamorphoses, to Gascoigne and Breton and Spenser. The rest is plain sailing in open water ; for these three stand at the head of that unrivalled reach of lyrism which, spreading to and shining in its utmost capacities of breadth and splendour in the times of Jonson and Fletcher and Shakespeare, was presently illuminated and refreshed by the concourse of such freshets and such streams of song as Carew and Herrick and Suckling, the Milton of Comus and Samson Agonistes, Crashaw, the Caroline Shelley, the Dryden of the Saint Cecilia odes and certain parts of the Anne Killigrew ; and, at its last term wofully dimmed and shrunken, a little quickened and refreshed by the song of Sedley, Mrs. Behn, and Rochester — this last, with his wild heart and his broken life and his notable gift of temperament, easily first — (since Milton is a belated sublimation of Elizabethanism) — after Dryden among the Restoration lyrists.

In the 'Augustan' atmosphere of Addison and Pope the English Lyric all but died again — was practically dead, in fact, but for Collins, and a stray burst from Goldsmith, and the humble work of certain Scots, who had a sounder tradition than the Augustans, and followed it as best they might. It was the dark hour before the dawn ; and the dawn was Blake,

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14 that Elizabethan, and something more, born into an age of prose, and Burns, the humourist of genius, the unrivalled artist, who so vamped the folk-song of a nation that he breathed new life into it at the same time that he made it seem his own. And the day of that dawn was Wordsworth and Sir Walter, was Landor, the pro test and the restraint, and Coleridge, the universal inspiration, and Byron, in whom passion was figured, and the master-lyrist, Shelley, and Keats, besides performances the most glorious possibility in all the range of English Verse. And after Keats there is no fresh note, until we hear from over the Atlantic, the artful, subtle, irresistible song of Poe : the New Music which none that has heard it can forget, and which, if you listen for it, you will catch in much of the melody that has found utterance since Mr. Swinburne, working after Baudelaire, shocked and enchanted the world with his First Series of Poems and Ballads.

It is with the beginnings of this New Music that my concert ends. The Coleridge-Keats School culminated in Tennyson ; and I would fain have made my close an harmonious and beautiful contrast between Old and New. But this, for reasons which I need not discuss, was not to be. W. E. H. Postscript. — My thanks are due to Mr. F. T. Palgrave for permission to reprint his redaction of a famous Scots ballad (266) ; to Mr. George Wyndham for the hint that Shakespeare's theory of the quatorzain is based on the practice of — not Daniel nor Drayton but — Surrey, and the suggestion, among others, that the numbers excerpted from Chaucer's Troilus (2) might well be found lyrical in the true sense and to the finest purpose ; to Mr. T. F. Henderson for revising and correcting the glossarial element, and to Mr. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly for compiling and redacting the bibliographical matter, in the Notes.

ENGLISH LYRICS FIVE CENTURIES OF SONG 17 BALLADE TO HIS LADY Hide, Absolon, thy gilte tresses clere ; Ester, lay thou thy meekness all a-doun ; Hide, Ionathas, all thy friendly manure ; Penalopee and Marcia Catoun, Make of your wifehood no comparisoun ; Hide ye your beauties, Isoude and Eleyne : My lady cometh, that all this may disteyne ! Thy faire body, let it not appere, Lavyne ; and thou, Lucrece of Rome toun, And Polixene, that boughten love so dere, And Cleopatre, with all thy passioun, Hide ye your trouthe of love and your renoun ; And thou, Tisbe, that hast of love such peyne : My lady cometh, that all this may disteyne ! Herro, Did6, Laud6mia, all y-fere, And Phyllis, hanging for thy Demophoun, And Canac£, espied by thy chere, Ysiphil£, betraysdd with Jasoun, Maketh of your trouth neither boast nor soun, Nor Ypermistre or Adriane, ye tweyne : My lady cometh, that all this may disteyne !

Geoffrey Chaucer. A CHAUCER 2 THE COMPLAINT OF TROILUS I Therewith when he was ware, and gan behold How shut was every window of the place, As frost, him thought, his herte gan to cold ; For which with changld, deedlich, paleface, With-outen word, he forth began to pace ; And, as God would, he gan so faste ride, That no wight of his countenance espied. Then said he thus : — ' O palace desolate, O house of houses whilom best y-hight, O palace empty and disconsolate, O thou lantern, of which quaint is the light, O palace, whilom day, that now art night, Well oughtest thou to fall, and I to die, Since she is went that wont was us to gye ! O palace, whilom crown of houses all, Enlumined with sun of alle bliss ! O ring fro which the ruby is out-fall ! O cause of woe, that cause hast been of lisse !

Yet, since I may no bet, fain would I kiss Thy colde dores, durst I for this route — And farewell shrine, of which the saint is out 1 ' n Fro thennesforth he rideth up and down, And everything com him to remembrance As he rood forth by places of the town, In which he whilom had all his pleasance : — ' Lo, yond saw I mine owen lady dance ; And in that temple, with her eyen clere, Me caughte first my righte lady dere. And yonder have I heard full lustily My dere herte laugh, and yonder play Saw I her one's eke full blissfully. And yonder ones to me gan she say : — " Now goode swete, love me well, I pray." And yond so goodly gan she me behold, That to the death mine herte is to her hold. CHAUCER 19 And at that corner, in the yonder house, Heard I mine alderlevest lady dere So womanly, with voice melodious, Singing so well, so goodly, and so clere, That in my soul yet methinketh I hear The blissful sound ; and, in that yonder place, My lady first me took unto her grace.' in A song of wordes but a few, Somewhat his woful herte for to light.

And when he was from every mannes sight, With softe voice he, of his lady dear, That was absent, gan sing as ye may hear : — ' O star, of which I lost have all the light, With herte sore well ought I to bewail, That ever dark in torment, night by night, Toward my death with wind in stem I sail ; For which the tenthe night, if that I fail The guiding of thy bemes bright an hour, My ship and me Caiybdis will devour.' IV This song when he thus songen hadde, sone He fell again into his sickness old ; And every night, as was his wont to done, He stood the brighte mone to behold, And all his sorrow he to the mone told ; And said : — ' I wis, when thou art horned new, I shall be glad, if all the world be true ! * I saw thine homes old eke by the morrow, When hennes rode my righte lady dere, That cause is of my torment and my sorrow ; For which, O brighte Lucina the clere, For love of God, ran fast about thy sphere !

For when thy home's newe ginne spring, Then shall she come, that may my blisse bring ! ' v Upon the walles fast eke would he walk, And on the Greekes host he wold'e see, And to himself right thus he wolde talk : — CHAUCER 20 ' Lo, yonder is mine owen lady free, Or elle's yonder, there tho' tente's be ! And thenne's comth this air, that is so sote That in my soul I feel it doth me bote. And hardely this wind, that more and more Thus stoundemele increaseth in my face, Is of my lady's depe sicknesse sore. I prove it thus, for in no other place Of all this town, save only in this space, Feel I no wind that souneth so like pain. It saith : — " A'as ! why twinned be we twain ? " ' Geoffrey Chaucer. 3 MERCILESS BEAUTY I. Captivity Yoor eyen two will slay me suddenly : I may the beauty of hem not sustene, So woundeth it through-out my herte kene.

And but your word will helen hastily My hertes wounde, while that it is green, Your eyen two will slay me sodenly : I may the beauty of hem not sustene. Upon my troth I say you faithfully, That ye be of my life and death the queen, For with my death the truthe shall be seen : Your eyen two will slay me sodenly : I may the beauty of hem not sustene, So woundeth it through-out my herte kene. II. Rejection So hath your beauty from your herte chased Pity, that me ne availeth not to plain : For Daunger halt your mercy in his chain. Guiltless my death thus have ye me purchased ; I say you sooth, me needeth not to feign : So hath your beauty from your herte chased Pity, that me ne availeth not to plain. DUNBAR 21 Alas ! that nature hath in you compassed So great beauty", that no man may attain To mercy, though he sterve for the pain !

So hath your beauty from your herte chased Pity, that me ne availeth not to plain ; For Daunger halt your mercy in his chain. III. Escape Since I from Love escaped am so fat, I never think to ben in his prison lean ; Since I am free, I count him not a bean. He may answer, and saye this or that ; I do no force, I speak right as I mean : Since I from Love escaped am so fat, I never think to ben in his prison lean. Love hath my name y-strike out of his sclat, And he is strike out of my booke's clean For evermore ; there is none other mean. Since I from Love escaped am so fat, I never think to ben in his prison lean : Since I am free, I count him not a bean ! Geoffrey Chaucer, 4 DUNBAR'S LAMENT WHEN HE WAS SICK I that in health was and gladness, Am troubled now with great sickness, And feebled with infirmity : — Timor Mortis conturbat me.

Our plesance here is all vain glory, This false world is but transitory, The flesh is brukle, the Fiend is slee : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. The state of man does change and vary, Now sound, now sick, now blithe, now sary, Now dansand merry, now like to dee : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. DUNBAR No state in earth here stande's sickir ; As with the wind waves the wickir, So waves this world's vanity : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. Unto the dead goes all Estates, Princes, Prelates, and Potestates, Both rich and poor of all degree : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. He takes the knights in to the field, Enarmed under helm and shield ; Victor he is at all mellee : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. That strong unmerciful tyrand Takes, on the mother's breast sowkand, The babe full of benignity : — Timor Mortis conturbat me.

He takes the campion in the stonr, The captain closit in the tour, The lady in bower full of beauty : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. He spares no lord for his piscence, No clerk for his intelligence ; His awful stroke may no man flee : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. Art-magicians and astrologues, Rethors, logicians, theologues, Them helpes no conclusions slee : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. In medicine the most practicians, Leeches, surrigians, and physicians, Themselves from death may not supplee : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. I see that makars among the lave Plays here their pageant, syne goes to grave ; Spar.d is not their faculty : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. DUNBAR 23 He has done petuously devour The noble Chaucer, of makars flower, The Monk of Bury, and Gower, all three : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. . . .

Since he has all my brothers tane, He will not let me live alane ; Of force I must his next prey be : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. Since for the dead remeid is none, Best is that we for death dispone, After our death that live may we : — Timor Mortis conturbat me. William Dunbar. _ MEDITATION IN WINTER In to these dirk and drumlie days, When sabill all the hewin arrays With misty vapours, clouds, and skies, Nature all courage me denies Of sangis, ballads, and of plays. When that the night does lenthin hours, With wind, with hail, and heavy showers, My dule spreit does lurk for schoir ; My heart for languor does forloir For lack of Summer with his flowers. I walk, I turn, sleep may I not ; I vexed am with heavy thought ; This world all o'er I cast about, And ay the mair I am in doubt, The mair that I remeid have sought.