ILES FLETCHER is one of the old English poets but And yet
little known to the general reader in America.
he was the author of a poem of high merit. He was born about twenty years after Shakspeare, or in 1588, and came of a family marked by great poetical talent. John Fletcher, the celebrated dramatist and fellow-laborer of Beaumont, was a cousin, and it was his elder brother, Phineas Fletcher, who wrote "The Purple Island," that singular and elaborate poetical allegory, carried out through twelve cantos, and relieved by much occasional beauty of thought and style. The father also, Dr. Giles Fletcher, has been ranked among the good poets of his day. The only work of Giles Fletcher, the son, which has been published, is of a religious character, "Christ's Victory and Triumph," a poem in four parts. It has never been reprinted entire in America, though full of fine passages, and marked throughout with originality and beauty. The
subjects are of course very much of the same nature as those of Paradise Regained;" a comparison of the two poems, however, by no means diminishes our admiration for the work of Fletcher, especially when we bear in mind that he wrote half a century before Milton. In fact, "Christ's Victory and Triumph" was, at the time it appeared, the finest sacred poem of any length in our language; it is full of a jubilant poetical eloquence and the earnest expression of strong religious feeling connected with the subject. Giles Fetcher, like his brother Phineas, was a clergyman of the Church of England, and led an uneventful life in his country parish of Alderton, Suffolk, where he died in 1623.
A description of Spring at Easter will, it is hoped, give the reader pleasure.
THE RETURN OF SPRING IN GREECE.
FROM THE GREER OF MELEAGER, 100 B. C.
Hush'd is the howl of wintry breezes wild;
The purple hour of youthful spring has smiled:
A livelier verdure clothes the teeming earth;
Buds press to life, rejoicing in their birth;
The laughing meadows drink the dews of night,
And fresh with opening roses glad the sight:
In song the joyous swains responsive vie;
Wild music floats and mountain melody.
Adventurous seamen spread the embosomed sail
O'er waves light heaving to the western gale;
While village youths their brows with ivy twine,
And hail with song the promise of the vine.
In curious cells the bees digest their spoil,
When vernal sunshine animates their toil,
And little birds, in warblings sweet and clear,
Salute thee, Maia, loveliest of the year:
Thee, on their deeps, the tuneful halcyons hail,
In streams the swan, in woods the nightingale.
If earth rejoices with new verdure gay,
And shepherds pipe, and flocks exulting play,
And sailors roam, and Bacchus leads his throng,
And bees to toil, and birds awake to song,
Shall the glad bard be mute in tuneful spring,
And, warm with love and joy, forget to sing?
Translation of ROBERT BLAND.
FROM THE GREEK OF ANACREON.
Behold the young, the rosy spring,
Gives to the breeze her scented wing,
While virgin graces, warm with May,
Fling roses o'er her dewy way.
The murmuring billows of the deep
Have languished into silent sleep.
And mark! the flitting sea-birds lave
Their plumes in the reflecting wave;
While cranes from hoary winter fly
To flutter in a kinder sky.
Now the genial star of day
Dissolves the murky clouds away,
And cultured field and winding stream
Are freshly glittering in his beam.
Now the earth prolific swells
With leafy buds and flow'ry bells;
Gemming shoots the olive twine,
Clusters bright festoon the vine;
All along the branches creeping,
Through the velvet foliage peeping,
Little infant fruits we see
Nursing into luxury.
The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings.
With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale,
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs;
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale,
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete with new repaired scale;
The adder all her slough away she flings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings;
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.
HENRY HOWARD, Earl of Surrey, 1516-1547.
FROM THE "THISTLE AND THE ROSE."
Quhen Merche wes with variand windis past,
And Appryll had with hir silver shouris
Tane leif at Nature, with ane orient blast,
And lusty May, that muddir is of flouris,
Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris,
Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt
Quhois harmony to heir it was delyt:
In bed at morrow sleiping as I lay,
Methocht Aurora, with her crystall ene
In at the window lukit by the day,
And halsit me with visage pale and grene;
On quhois hand a lark sang, fro the splene,
Awak, luvaris, out of your slemering,
Se how the lusty morrow dois upspring!"
Methocht fresche May befoir my bed upstude,
In weid depaynt of mony diverse hew,
Sober, benyng, and full of mansuetude,
In bright atteir of flouris forgit new,
Hevinly of color, quhyt, reid, brown, and blew,
Balmit in dew, and gilt with Phebus' bemys;
Quhil al the house illumynit of her lemys.
WILLIAM DUNBAR, 1465-1530.
Sweet Spring, thou com'st with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flow'rs,
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their show'rs.
Sweet Spring, thou com'st-but, ah! my pleasant hours
And happy days with thee come not again;
The sad memorials only of my pain
Do with thee come, which turns my sweets to sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wert before,
Delicious, lusty, amiable, fair;
But she whose breath embalm'd thy wholesome air
Is gone; nor gold, nor gems, can her restore.
Neglected virtues, seasons go and come,
When thine forgot lie closed in a tomb.
What doth it serve to see the sun's bright face,
And skies enamell'd with the Indian gold?
Or the moon in a fierce chariot roll'd,
And all the glory of that starry place?
What doth it serve earth's beauty to behold,
The mountain's pride, the meadow's flow'ry grace,
The stately comeliness of forests old,
The sport of floods which would themselves embrace?
What doth it serve to hear the sylvans' songs,
The cheerful thrush, the nightingale's sad strains,
Which in dark shades seem to deplore my wrongs?
For what doth serve all that this world contains,
Since she for whom those once to me were dear,
Can have no part of them now with me here?
WILLIAM DRUMMOND, 1585-1649
Now Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and cold, and rain,
And clothes him in the embroidery
Of glittering sun, and clear, blue sky.
With beast and bird the forest rings,
Each in his jargon cries or sings;
And Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and cold, and rain.
River and fount, and tinkling brook,
Wear in their dainty livery
Drops of silver jewelry;
In new-made suit they merry look;
And Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and cold, and rain.
CHARLES, DUKE OF ORLEANS, 1891.
SPRING, AT EASTER.
FROM "CHRIST'S TRIUMPH AND VICTORY."
But now the second morning from her bower,
Began to glister in her beams; and now
The roses of the day began to flower
In the Eastern garden; for heaven's smiling brow,
Half insolent for joy, began to show :
The early sun came dancing lively out,
And the brag lambs ran wantoning about.
That heaven and earth might seem in triumph both to shout.
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