WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN 1585–1649

Phœbus, arise! And paint the sable skies With azure, white, and red: Rouse Memnon’s mother from her Tithon’s bed That she thy càreer may with roses spread: The nightingales thy coming each-where sing: Make an eternal Spring! Give life to this dark world which lieth dead; Spread forth thy golden hair In larger locks than thou wast wont before, And emperor-like decore With diadem of pearl thy temples fair: Chase hence the ugly night Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

This is that happy morn, That day, long-wished day Of all my life so dark (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn And fates not hope betray), Which, purely white, deserves An everlasting diamond should it mark. This is the morn should bring unto this grove My Love, to hear and recompense my love. Fair king, who all preserves, But show thy blushing beams, And thou two sweeter eyes Shalt see than those which by Peneus’ streams Did once thy heart surprise. Nay, suns, which shine as clear As thou, when two thou didst to Rome appear. Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise: If that ye winds would hear A voice surpassing far Amphion’s lyre, Your stormy chiding stay; Let Zephyr only breathe, And with her tresses play, Kissing sometimes these purple ports of death. —The winds all silent are, And Phœbus in his chair Ensaffroning sea and air Makes vanish every star: Night like a drunkard reels Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels: The fields with flowers are decked in every hue, The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue; Here is the pleasant place— And nothing wanting is, save She, alas!

Sleep, Silence’ child, sweet father of soft rest, Prince, whose approach peace to all mortals brings, Indifferent host to shepherds and to kings, Sole comforter of minds with grief oppressed; Lo, by thy charming rod all breathing things Lie slumb’ring, with forgetfulness possessed, And yet o’er me to spread thy drowsy wings Thou sparest, alas! who cannot be thy guest. Since I am thine, O come, but with that face To inward light which thou art wont to show; With feigned solace ease a true-felt woe; Or if, deaf god, thou do deny that grace, Come as thou wilt, and what thou wilt bequeath: I long to kiss the image of my death.

Dear chorister, who from these shadows sends, Ere that the blushing morn dare show her light, Such sad lamenting strains, that night attends, Become all ear, stars stay to hear thy plight: If one whose grief even reach of thought transcends, Who ne’er, not in a dream, did taste delight, May thee importune who like care pretends, And seems to joy in woe, in woe’s despite; Tell me (so may thou fortune milder try, And long, long sing) for what thou thus complains, Sith, winter gone, the sun in dappled sky Now smiles on meadows, mountains, woods, and plains? The bird, as if my question did her move, With trembling wings sobbed forth, ‘I love! I love!’

Like the Idalian queen, Her hair about her eyne, With neck and breast’s ripe apples to be seen, At first glance of the morn, In Cyprus’ gardens gathering those fair flowers Which of her blood were born, I saw, but fainting saw, my paramours. The graces naked danced about the place, The winds and trees amazed With silence on her gazed; The flowers did smile, like those upon her face, And as their aspen stalks those fingers band, That she might read my case A hyacinth I wished me in her hand.

The beauty and the life Of life’s and beauty’s fairest paragon, O tears! O grief! hung at a feeble thread To which pale Atropos had set her knife; The soul with many a groan Had left each outward part, And now did take its last leave of the heart; Nought else did want, save death, even to be dead; When the afflicted band about her bed, Seeing so fair him come in lips, cheeks, eyes, Cried, ‘Ah! and can death enter paradise?’