Which in this sort he sends thee to present me?
I am his friend, what gives he to his foes,
If this in token of his love he sent me?
But 'tis his will, and must not discontent me:
Yet after, sure, a proverb this will prove,
The gift King John bestow'd upon his love.

When all that race in memory are set,
And by their statues, their achievements done,
Which won abroad, and which at home did get,
From son to sire, from sire again to son,
Grac'd with the spoils that gloriously they won:

Oh! that of him it only should be said,
This was King John, the murth'rer of a maid!

Oh! keep it safely from the mouth of Fame,
That none do hear of his unhallow'd deed;
Be secret to him, and conceal his shame,
Lest after-ages hap the same to read,
And that the letters showing it do bleed!

Oh! let the grave mine innocency hold,
Before of him this tyranny be told!'

Thus having spoke, my sorrows to assuage,
The heavy burthen of my pensive breast,
The poison then that in my breast did rage,
His deadly vigour forcibly exprest,
Not suff'ring me to stand upon the rest,

Longer for him it was no time to stay;
And Death call'd on, to hasten me away.

Thus in my closet being left alone,
Upon the floor uncomfortably lying,

The fact committed, and the murth'rer gone,
Arrived at the utmost point of dying,
Some of the sisters me by chance espying,

Call'd all the rest, that in most woeful plight
Came to behold that miserable sight.

Thus like a rose by some unkindly blast,
'Mongst many buds that round about it grow,
The with'ring leaves improsp'rously doth cast,
Whilst all the rest their sovereign beauties show:
Amidst this goodly sisterhood even so,

And

Nipt with cold death untimely did I fade,
Whilst they about me piteous wailing made.

my sad soul upon her sudden flight,

So soon forsaken of each several sense,
With all the horror death could her affright,
Strongly disturbed at her parting hence,
All comfort fled her; for her last defence,

Doth to her spotless innocence betake her,

Which left her not, when all the rest forsake her

To show our pleasures are but children's toys,
And as mere shadows, or like bubbles pass,
As years increase, so waning are our joys,
Forgotten as our favours in a glass*,
A very tale of that which never was:

* Forgotten as our favours in a glass.] A thought peculiarly in the style of Shakspeare, yet, to the best of my knowledge, unborrowed from him. What follows, namely, his comparing the pleasures of life to

A very tale of that which never was,

is an improvement, I think, upon Shakspeare's comparison of life to

a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth, Act V. Scene v.

Even so, Death us and our delights can sever,
Virtue alone abandoneth us never *.

Legend of Matilda, by M. Drayton.

* Speed gives the following relation of this story: "King John disherited some noblemen without judgment of their peeres, and he would have destroyed Ranulph Earle of Chester, for that he reproched him with this, that he should use the wife of his brother Geffrey, Earle of Brytaine, whom Ranulph Earle of Chester had married, and from whom Ranulph was divorced by the council of King John, and the said Earle had married the daughter of the Earle Ferrers. King John being now in extremity, and mindinge to impute the fault to them that would not appease his fury aforetime, reprehended sometimes one, and sometimes another of his nobility, as traytors, calling them jealous, whose beds (as he bragged) he had defiled, and defloured their daughters. The Chronicle of Dunmow saith, this discord arose betwixt the king and his barons because of Mawde, called the faire, daughter to Robert Fitz Walter, whom the king loved, but her father would not consent, and thereupon ensued war throughout England. The king spoiled especially the castle Baynard in London, and other holds, and houses of the Barons. Robert Fitz Walter, Roger Fitz Robert, and Richard Mount Fitchet, passed over into France; some also went into Wales, and some into Scotland, and did great damage to the king. Whilest Mawde the Faire remained at Dunmow, there came a messenger unto her from King John about his suit in love; but because she would not agree, the messenger poisoned a boiled or potched egge against she was hungerie, whereof she died, and was buried in the quire at Dunmow,"

Stowe's Annales, p. 170, Edit. 1615,

ROBERT, DUKE OF NORMANDY,

ELDEST SON OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, AND HEIR
TO THE ENGLISH THRONE, AT HIS RETURN FROM
THE CRUSADES, ON THE DEATH OF HIS BROTHER
WILLIAM RUFUS, WHO HAD USURPED HIS KINGDOM,
IS VANQUISHED BY HENRY THE FIRST, AND CON-
FINED A PRISONER IN CARDIFF CASTLE.

As bird in cage debarr'd the use of wings,
Her captiv'd life as nature's chiefest wrong,
In doleful ditty sadly sits and sings,
And mourns her thralled liberty so long,
Till breath be spent in
many a sithful song:

So here captiv'd I many days did spend

In sorrow's plaint, till death my days did end.

Where as a prisoner though I did remain ;
Yet did my brother grant this liberty,

To quell the common speech, which did complain
On my distress, and on his tyranny,
That in his parks and forests joining by,

When I did please I to and fro might go,
Which in the end was cause of all my woe.

For on a time, when as Aurora bright
Began to scale heaven's steepy battlement,
And to the world disclose her cheerful light,
As was my wont, I with my keeper went
To put away my sorrow's discontent :

Thereby to ease me of my captive care,

And solace my sad thoughts in th' open air.

Wand'ring through forest wide, at length we gain
A steep cloud-kissing rock, whose horned crown
With proud imperial look beholds the main,
Where Severn's dangerous waves run rolling down,
From th' Holmes into the seas, by Cardiff town,

Whose quick devouring sands so dangerous been
To those, that wander Amphytrite's green:

As there we stood, the country round we ey'd*
To view the workmanship of nature's hand,
There stood a mountain, from whose weeping side
A brook breaks forth into the low-lying land,
Here lies a plain, and there a wood doth stand,

Here pastures, meads, corn-fields, a vale do crown,
A castle here shoots up, and there a town.

Here one with angle o'er a silver stream
With baneful bait the nibbling fish doth feed,
There in a plough'd-land with his painful team,

The ploughman sweats, in hope for labour's meed:

....

Here sits a goatherd on a craggy rock,

And there in shade a shepherd with his flock.

The sweet delight of such a rare prospect
Might yield content unto a careful eye;
Yet down the rock descending in neglect
Of such delight, the sun now mounting high,
I sought the shade in vale, which low did lie,

* As there we stood, the country round we ey'd.] If we consider the time in which this was written, we cannot but admire the justness and propriety of the rural scenery here selected.