TIMES GO BY TURNS. BY ROBERT SOUTHWELL. [ROBERT SOUTHWELL was born at St. Faith's, in Norfolk, in 1560, and was educated in the English College at Douay,-his family being Roman Catholic. He joined the Jesuits at Rome, and, on returning to England, became involved in the intrigues of their order. Consequently he was committed to the Tower, where he remained a prisoner for three years, at the end of which time he was tried, and executed at Tyburn, in 1595. Southwell's poetry, which is only of the second order, is sad and contemplative; and, as Campbell remarks, it is impossible to read it "without lamenting that its author should have been either the instrument of bigotry, or the object of persecution."] THE lopped tree in time may grow again, Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower; The sorriest wight may find release of pain, The driest soil suck in some moistening shower: Time goes by turns, and chances change by course, From foul to fair, from better hap to worse. The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow; She draws her favours to the lowest ebb: Her tides have equal times to come and go; Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web No joy so great but runneth to an end, No hap so hard but may in fine amend. Not always fall of leaf, nor ever spring, The saddest birds a season find to sing, The roughest storm a calm may soon allay. Thus, with succeeding turns, God tempereth all, A chance may win that by mischance was lost; Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all. [EDMUND SPENSER, descended from the family of the Spensers in Nottinghamshire, was born in London about the year 1553, and was educated at Cambridge, where he entered as a sizar. Being introduced to Sir Philip Sidney, he became known at Court, and in 1580 was appointed secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, Viceroy of Ireland. In 1586 he obtained from the Queen a grant of 3,028 acres of land, in the county of Cork, out of the forfeited estate of the Earl of Desmond; and being obliged by his patent to live on his property, he took up his residence at Kilcolman Castle. It is now a ruin, but it will always be dear to the lovers of genius. In this delightful retreat he wrote the three first books of his "Faerie Queene," and on presenting them to Elizabeth received from her a pension of £50 a year. He published the next three books in 1596. He was a strenuous advocate for arbitrary power, and having, it is said, attempted to add unjustly to his possessions, when Tyrone's rebellion broke out, had he not sought for safety by flight he would have been one of the first victims to the fury of the native Irish, with whom revenge was a virtue; his escape was so precipitate, that he left his infant child to the flames which consumed his house. He came to England with a broken heart, and died in about three months, in extreme indigence. His remains were interred in Westminster Abbey. The "Faerie Queene" was to have consisted of twelve books, but there are only fragments of the last six. The loss of the remainder is not perhaps extremely to be regretted, since there are symptoms in the last three books which he published that his genius was beginning to be exhausted; and the work can scarcely be considered imperfect, as each book is, in itself, a complete poem. His language differs from that of all the other poets of his age in structure and cadence, having as it were been formed for his subject. His versification is both smooth and majestic, and his imagination seems to have been inexhaustible. He wrote some of the best sonnets in our language.] A GENTLE knight was pricking on the plain, |