Hymen’s Triumph contains many more passages of notable merit than its predecessor.  There is, indeed, one passage in the Queen’s Arcadia which will bear comparison with anything Daniel ever wrote, but it stands in somewhat striking contrast with its surroundings.  This is the opening of the speech in which Melibaeus addresses the assembled Arcadians, and well deserves quotation.

    You gentle Shepheards and Inhabitors
    Of these remote and solitary parts
    Of Mountaynous Arcadia, shut up here
    Within these Rockes, these unfrequented Clifts,
    The walles and bulwarkes of our libertie,
    From out the noyse of tumult, and the throng
    Of sweating toyle, ratling concurrencie,
    And have continued still the same and one
    In all successions from antiquitie;
    Whil’st all the states on earth besides have made
    A thousand revolutions, and have rowl’d
    From change to change, and never yet found rest,
    Nor ever bettered their estates by change;
    You I invoke this day in generall,
    To doe a worke that now concernes us all,
    Lest that we leave not to posteritie,
    Th’ Arcadia that we found continued thus
    By our fore-fathers care who left it us. (V. iii.)

Such passages are more frequent in Hymen’s Triumph.  Take the description of the early love of Thirsis and Silvia, instinct with a delicacy and freshness that even Tasso might have envied[258]: 

    Then would we kisse, then sigh, then looke, and thus
    In that first garden of our simplenesse
    We spent our child-hood; but when yeeres began
    To reape the fruite of knowledge, ah, how then
    Would she with graver looks, with sweet stern brow,
    Check my presumption and my forwardnes;
    Yet still would give me flowers, stil would me shew
    What she would have me, yet not have me, know. (I. i.)

Thirsis, who is the typical ‘constant lover’ of pastoral convention, and does

    Hold it to be a most heroicke thing
    To act one man, and do that part exact,

thus addresses his friend Palaemon in defence of love: 

    Ah, know that when you mention love, you name
    A sacred mistery, a Deity,
    Not understood of creatures built of mudde,
    But of the purest and refined clay
    Whereto th’ eternall fires their spirits convey. 
    And for a woman, which you prize so low,
    Like men that doe forget whence they are men,
    Know her to be th’ especiall creature, made
    By the Creator as the complement
    Of this great Architect[259] the world, to hold
    The same together, which would otherwise
    Fall all asunder; and is natures chiefe
    Vicegerent upon earth, supplies her state. 
    And doe you hold it weakenesse then to love,
    And love so excellent a miracle
    As is a worthy woman? (III. iv.)