“O more than moon, Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere; Weep me not dead in thine arms, but forbear To teach the sea what it may do too soon. Let not the wind example find To do me more harm than it purposeth; Since thou and I sigh one another’s breath, Whoe’er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other’s death.” There is a lingering sweetness in these lines, for all their manifest unwisdom, that is surpassed only by a pathetic sonnet of Drayton’s, where the pain of parting, bravely borne at first, grows suddenly too sharp for sufferance, and the lover’s pride breaks and melts into the passion of a last appeal:-- “Since there’s no helpe,--come, let us kisse and parte. Nay, I have done,--you get no more of me; And I am glad,--yea, glad with all my hearte, That thus so cleanly I myself can free. Shake hands forever!--cancel all our vows; And when we meet at any time againe, Be it not seene in either of our brows, That we one jot of former love retaine. “Now--at the last gaspe of Love’s latest breath-- When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies; When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes, Now! if thou would’st--when all have given him over-- From death to life thou might’st him yet recover.” Here, at least, we have grace of sentiment and beauty of form combined to make a perfect whole. It seems strange indeed that Mr. Saintsbury, who gives such generous praise to Drayton’s patriotic poems, his legends, his epistles, even his prose prefaces, should have no single word to spare for this most tender and musical of leave-takings. As for the capricious humors and overwrought imagery which disfigure so many of the early love-songs, they have received their full allotment of censure, and have provoked the scornful mirth of critics too staid or too sensitive to be tolerant. We hear more of them, sometimes, than of the merits which should win them forgiveness. Lodge, dazzled by Rosalynde’s beauty, is ill disposed to pass lightly over the catalogue of her charms. Her lips are compared to budded roses, her teeth to ranks of lilies; her eyes are “sapphires set in snow, Refining heaven by every wink,” her cheeks are blushing clouds, and her neck is a stately tower where the god of love lies captive. All things in nature contribute to her excellence:-- “With Orient pearl, with ruby red, With marble white, with sapphire blue, Her body every way is fed, Yet soft to touch, and sweet in view.” But when this fair representative of all flowers and gems, “smiling to herself to think of her new entertained passion,” lifts up the music of her voice in that enchanting madrigal,-- “Love in my bosom, like a bee, Doth suck his sweet; Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet,”--