Drummond was a sonneteer of great skill, and used many original combinations of rime-schemes,--some forty in all,--yet usually approximating to the Italian type. Leigh Hunt says: "Drummond's sonnets, for the most part, are not only of the legitimate order, but they are the earliest in the language that breathe what may be called the habit of mind observable in the best Italian writers of sonnets; that is to say, a mixture of tenderness, elegance, love of country, seclusion, and conscious sweetness of verse." (Essay on the Sonnet, in _The Book of the Sonnet_, vol. i. pp. 78, 79.) Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men do with thee go-- Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery. Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die. (JOHN DONNE: _Holy Sonnets_, X. 1635.) Donne's series of "Holy Sonnets" was one of the few Elizabethan sequences, or cycles, which dealt with other than amatory subjects. The seven sonnets of the series called _La Corona_ are bound together into a "crown of sonnets,"--an Italian fashion, according to which the first line of each sonnet is the same as the last of the sonnet preceding, and the last line of the last sonnet the same as the first line of the first. When I consider how my light is spent Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide,-- Doth God exact day-labor, light denied? I fondly ask:--But patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies: God doth not need Either man's work, or His own gifts; who best Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best: His state Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest:-- They also serve who only stand and wait. (MILTON: _On his Blindness_. ab. 1655.) Milton learned the sonnet direct from the Italian, and wrote five in that language. While following the Italian rime-schemes, however, he was not careful to observe any division between octave and sestet. Like Donne, he turned the sonnet to other subjects than that of love, or--in Landor's words-- "He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave The notes to Glory." (_To Lamartine._) Compare, also, Wordsworth's saying that in Milton's hand