Chapter XXII: From 1588 to 1591 (3)

First lullaby my youthful years.
It is now time to go to bed,
For crooked age and hoary years
Have won the haven within my head:
With lullaby then youth be still,
With lullaby content thy will,
Since courage quails and comes behind,
Go sleep and so beguile thy mind.

Next lullaby my gazing eyes,
Which wonted were to glaunce apace;
For every glass may now suffice
To shew the furrows in my face.
With lullaby then wink awhile,
With lullaby your looks beguile:
Let no fair face or beauty bright
Entice you eft with vain delight.

And lullaby my wanton will,
Let reason's rule now reign thy thought,
Since all too late I find by skill,
How dear I have thy fancies bought:
With lullaby now take thine ease,
With lullaby thy doubts appease;
For trust to this, if thou be still,
My body shall obey thy will.

Thus lullaby my youth, mine eyes,
My will, my ware, and all that was,
I can no mo delays devise,
But welcome pain, let pleasure pass:
With lullaby now take your leave,
With lullaby your dreams deceive,
And when you rise with waking eye,
Remember then this lullaby.

Respecting another poet of greater popularity than Gascoigne, and of a more original turn of genius, Warner, the author of Albion's England, Puttenham has preserved a discreet silence; for his great work had been prohibited by the capricious tyranny, or rigid decorum, of archbishop Whitgift, and seizure made in 1586 of the copies surreptitiously printed. This long and singular poem is a kind of metrical chronicle, containing the remarkable events of _English_ history from the flood,--the starting point of all chroniclers,--to the reign of queen Elizabeth. It is written in the common ballad measure, and in a style often creeping and prosaic, sometimes quaint and affected; but passages of beautiful simplicity and strokes of genuine pathos frequently occur to redeem its faults, and the tediousness of the historical narration is relieved by a large intermixture of interesting and entertaining episodes. The ballads of Queen Eleanor and fair Rosamond, Argentile and Curan, and the Patient Countess, selected by Dr. Percy in his Relics of Ancient Poetry, may be regarded by the poetical student of the present day as a sufficient specimen of the talents of Warner: but in his own time he was complimented as the Homer or Virgil of the age; the persevering reader travelled, not only with patience but delight, through his seventy-seven long chapters; and it is said that the work became popular enough, notwithstanding its prohibition by authority, to supersede in some degree its celebrated predecessor the Mirror for Magistrates.