Which in this sort he sends thee to present me? When all that race in memory are set, Oh! that of him it only should be said, Oh! keep it safely from the mouth of Fame, Oh! let the grave mine innocency hold, Thus having spoke, my sorrows to assuage, Longer for him it was no time to stay; Thus in my closet being left alone, The fact committed, and the murth'rer gone, Call'd all the rest, that in most woeful plight Thus like a rose by some unkindly blast, And Nipt with cold death untimely did I fade, my sad soul upon her sudden flight, So soon forsaken of each several sense, 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, * 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, Macbeth, Act V. Scene v. Even so, Death us and our delights can sever, 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 As bird in cage debarr'd the use of wings, 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 ; To quell the common speech, which did complain When I did please I to and fro might go, For on a time, when as Aurora bright 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 Whose quick devouring sands so dangerous been As there we stood, the country round we ey'd* Here pastures, meads, corn-fields, a vale do crown, Here one with angle o'er a silver stream 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 * 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. |