A Defence of Poesie and Poems Part 10

Peak hath a cave, whose narrow entries find Large rooms within where drops distil amain: Till knit with cold, though there unknown remain, Deck that poor place with alabaster lined.

Mine eyes the strait, the roomy cave, my mind; Whose cloudy thoughts let fall an inward rain Of sorrow's drops, till colder reason bind Their running fall into a constant vein Of truth, far more than alabaster pure, Which, though despised, yet still doth truth endure.

V.

A field there is, where, if a stake oe prest Deep in the earth, what hath in earth receipt, Is changed to stone in hardness, cold, and weight, The wood above doth soon consuming rest.

The earth her ears; the stake is my request; Of which, how much may pierce to that sweet seat, To honour turned, doth dwell in honour's nest, Keeping that form, though void of wonted heat; But all the rest, which fear durst not apply, Failing themselves, with withered conscience die.

VI.

Of s.h.i.+ps by s.h.i.+pwreck cast on Albion's coast, Which rotting on the rocks, their death to die: From wooden bones and blood of pitch doth fly A bird, which gets more life than s.h.i.+p had lost.

My s.h.i.+p, Desire, with wind of l.u.s.t long tost, Brake on fair cliffs of constant Chast.i.ty; Where plagued for rash attempt, gives up his ghost; So deep in seas of virtue, beauties lie: But of this death flies up the purest love, Which seeming less, yet n.o.bler life doth move.

VII.

These wonders England breeds; the last remains - A lady, in despite of Nature, chaste, On whom all love, in whom no love is placed, Where Fairness yields to Wisdom's shortest reins.

A humble pride, a scorn that favour stains; A woman's mould, but like an angel graced; An angel's mind, but in a woman cased; A heaven on earth, or earth that heaven contains: Now thus this wonder to myself I frame; She is the cause that all the rest I am.

Thou blind man's mark; thou fool's self-chosen snare, Fond fancy's sc.u.m, and dregs of scattered thought: Band of all evils; cradle of causeless care; Thou web of will, whose end is never wrought:

Desire! Desire! I have too dearly bought, With price of mangled mind, thy worthless ware; Too long, too long, asleep thou hast me brought Who shouldst my mind to higher things prepare;

But yet in vain thou hast my ruin sought; In vain thou mad'st me to vain things aspire; In vain thou kindlest all thy smoky fire: For Virtue hath this better lesson taught, Within myself to seek my only hire, Desiring nought but how to kill Desire.

POEM: FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN

Leave me, O love! which reachest but to dust; And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things: Grow rich in that which never taketh rust; Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.

Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be, Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light That doth both s.h.i.+ne, and give us sight to see.

O take fast hold! let that light be thy guide, In this small course which birth draws out to death, And think how evil becometh him to slide, Who seeketh heaven, and comes from heavenly breath.

Then farewell, world, thy uttermost I see, Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.

SPLENDIDIS LONGUM VALEDICO NUGIS

Footnote:

{1} Edward Wotton, elder brother of Sir Henry Wotton. He was knighted by Elizabeth in 1592, and made Comptroller of her Household. Observe the playfulness in Sidney's opening and close of a treatise written throughout in plain, manly English without Euphuism, and strictly reasoned.

{2} Here the introduction ends, and the argument begins with its Part 1. Poetry the first Light-giver.

{3} A fable from the "Hetamythium" of Laurentius Abstemius, Professor of Belles Lettres at Urbino, and Librarian to Duke Guido Ubaldo under the Pontificate of Alexander VI. (1492-1503).

{4} Pliny says ("Nat. Hist.," lib. xi., cap. 62) that the young vipers, impatient to be born, break through the side of their mother, and so kill her.

{5} Part 2. Borrowed from by Philosophers.

{6} Timaeus, the Pythagorean philosopher of Locri, and the Athenian Critias are represented by Plato as having listened to the discourse of Socrates on a Republic. Socrates calls on them to show such a state in action. Critias will tell of the rescue of Europe by the ancient citizens of Attica, 10,000 years before, from an inroad of countless invaders who came from the vast island of Atlantis, in the Western Ocean; a struggle of which record was preserved in the temple of Naith or Athene at Sais, in Egypt, and handed down, through Solon, by family tradition to Critias. But first Timaeus agrees to expound the structure of the universe; then Critias, in a piece left unfinished by Plato, proceeds to show an ideal society in action against pressure of a danger that seems irresistible.

{7} Plato's "Republic," book ii.

{8} Part 3. Borrowed from by Historians.

{9} Part 4. Honoured by the Romans as Sacred and Prophetic.

{10} Part 5. And really sacred and prophetic in the Psalms of David.

{11} Part 6. By the Greeks, Poets were honoured with the name of Makers.

{12} Poetry is the one creative art. Astronomers and others repeat what they find.

{13} Poets improve Nature.

{14} And idealize man.

{15} Here a Second Part of the Essay begins.

{16} Part 1. Poetry defined.

{17} Part 2. Its kinds. a. Divine.

{18} Philosophical, which is perhaps too imitative.

{19} Marcus Manilius wrote under Tiberius a metrical treatise on Astronomy, of which five books on the fixed stars remain.

{20} Poetry proper.

{21} Part 3. Subdivisions of Poetry proper.

{22} Its essence is in the thought, not in apparelling of verse.

{23} Heliodorus was Bishop of Tricca, in Thessaly, and lived in the fourth century. His story of Theagenes and Chariclea, called the "AEthiopica," was a romantic tale in Greek which was, in Elizabeth's reign, translated into English.

{24} The Poet's Work and Parts. Part 1. WORK: What Poetry does for us.

{25} Their clay lodgings -