XIV
JAMES SHIRLEY
The dusk of day’s decline was hard on dark
When evening trembled round thy glowworm
lamp
That shone across her shades and dewy
damp
A small clear beacon whose benignant spark
Was gracious yet for loiterers’ eyes to mark,
Though changed the watchword of our English
camp
Since the outposts rang round Marlowe’s
lion ramp,
When thy steed’s pace went ambling round Hyde
Park.
And in the thickening twilight under thee
Walks Davenant, pensive in the paths where he,
The blithest throat that ever carolled love
In music made of morning’s merriest
heart,
Glad Suckling, stumbled from his seat above
And reeled on slippery roads of alien
art.
XV
THE TRIBE OF BENJAMIN
Sons born of many a loyal Muse to Ben,
All true-begotten, warm with wine or ale,
Bright from the broad light of its presence,
hail!
Prince Randolph, nighest his throne of all his men,
Being highest in spirit and heart who hailed him then
King, nor might other spread so blithe
a sail:
Cartwright, a soul pent in with narrower
pale,
Praised of thy sire for manful might of pen:
Marmion, whose verse keeps alway keen and fine
The perfume of their Apollonian wine
Who shared with that stout sire of all
and thee
The exuberant chalice of his echoing shrine:
Is not your praise writ broad in gold
which he
Inscribed, that all who praise his name
should see?
XVI
ANONYMOUS PLAYS:
“ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM”
Mother whose womb brought forth our man of men,
Mother of Shakespeare, whom all time acclaims
Queen therefore, sovereign queen of English
dames,
Throned higher than sat thy sonless empress then,
Was it thy son’s young passion-guided pen
Which drew, reflected from encircling
flames,
A figure marked by the earlier of thy
names
Wife, and from all her wedded kinswomen
Marked by the sign of murderess? Pale and great,
Great in her grief and sin, but in her
death
And anguish of her penitential breath
Greater than all her sin or sin-born fate,
She stands, the holocaust of dark desire,
Clothed round with song for ever as with
fire.
XVII
ANONYMOUS PLAYS
Ye too, dim watchfires of some darkling hour,
Whose fame forlorn time saves not nor
proclaims
For ever, but forgetfulness defames
And darkness and the shadow of death devour,
Lift up ye too your light, put forth your power,
Let the far twilight feel your soft small
flames
And smile, albeit night name not even
their names,
Ghost by ghost passing, flower blown down on flower: