Sir Walter Raleigh (1554?–1618). Poems. 1892.
XX.Continuation of the lost poem, Cynthia; now first published from the Hatfield MSS.; 16041618?
Keep these among the rest, or say it was a dream;
For those that like, expound, and those that loathe, express
Meanings according as their minds are moved more or less.
For writing what thou art, or showing what thou were,
Adds to the one disdain, to the other but despair.
Thy mind of neither needs, in both seeing it exceeds.
Feels not the wounds of spiteful envy;
But my thralled mind, of liberty deprived,
Fast fettered in her ancient memory,
Doth nought behold but sorrow’s dying face:
Such prison erst was so delightful,
As it desired no other dwelling place:
But time’s effects and destinies despiteful
Have changed both my keeper and my fare.
Love’s fire and beauty’s light I then had store;
But now, close kept, as captives wonted are,
That food, that heat, that light, I find no more.
Despair bolts up my doors; and I alone
Speak to dead walls; but those hear not my moan.
The 21st and Last Book of the Ocean, to Cynthia.
In simple words that I my woes complain;
You that then died when first my fancy erred,—
Joys under dust that never live again?
Or did my mind her own spirit still inhold,
Were not my living passion so repressed
As to the dead the dead did these unfold,
Should witness my mishap in higher kind;
But my love’s wounds, my fancy in the hearse,
The idea but resting of a wasted mind,
The broken monuments of my great desires,—
From these so lost what may the affections be?
What heat in cinders of extinguished fires?
Which through more fairer fields their courses bend,
Slain with self-thoughts, amazed in fearful dreams,
Woes without date, discomforts without end:
And glean the broken ears with miser’s hand,
Who sometime did enjoy the weighty sheaves;
I seek fair flowers amid the brinish sand.
Under those healthless trees I sit alone,
Where joyful birds sing neither lovely lays,
Nor Philomen recounts her direful moan.
That might renew my dolorous conceit,
While happy then, while love and fantasy
Confined my thoughts on that fair flock to wait;
The messengers sometimes of my great woe;
But all on earth, as from the cold storms bending,
Shrink from my thoughts in high heavens or below.
Oh, true desire, the spur of my conceit,
Oh, worthiest spirit, my mind’s impulsion,
Oh, eyes transpersant, my affection’s bait;
Divine conceit, my pains’ acceptance,
Oh, all in one! oh, heaven on earth transparent!
The seat of joys and love’s abundance!
Gathered those flowers, to her pure sense pleasing;
Out of her eyes, the store of joys, did choose
Equal delights, my sorrow’s counterpoising.
Small drops of joys sweetened great worlds of woes;
One gladsome day a thousand cares redressed;—
Whom love defends, what fortune overthrows?
When she did ill, what empires would have pleased?
No other power effecting woe or bliss,
She gave, she took, she wounded, she appeased.
Wounding my mind with contrary conceit,
Transferred itself sometime to her aspiring,
Sometime the trumpet of her thought’s retreat.
To try desire, to try love severed far,
When I was gone, she sent her memory,
More strong than were ten thousand ships of war;
To leave my friends, my fortune, my attempt;
To leave the purpose I so long had sought,
And hold both cares and comforts in contempt.
Such trust in doubt, such comfort in despair,
Which, like the gentle lamb, though lately weaned,
Plays with the dug, though finds no comfort there.
Retaineth warmth although the spirit be gone,
And by a power in nature moves again
Till it be laid below the fatal stone;
Left for a time by her life-giving sun,
Doth by the power remaining of his rays
Produce some green, though not as it hath done;
Although the course be turned some other way,
Doth for a time go round upon the beam,
Till, wanting strength to move, it stands at stay;
Widow of all the joys it once possessed,
My hopes clean out of sight with forced wind,
To kingdoms strange, to lands far-off addressed,
With many wounds, with death’s cold pangs embraced,
Writes in the dust, as one that could no more,
Whom love, and time, and fortune, had defaced;
With means so weak, the soul even then depicting
The weal, the woe, the passages of old,
And worlds of thoughts described by one last sighing.
And leaves a light much like the past day’s dawning,
And, every toil and labour wholly ended,
Each living creature draweth to his resting,
To write the story of all ages past,
And end the same before the approaching night.
Whose shroud, by sorrow woven now to end,
Hath seen that ever shining sun declined,
So many years that so could not descend,
In every part transferred by love’s swift thought;
Far off or near, in waking or in dreams,
Imagination strong their lustre brought.
To master distance, time, or cruelty;
Such art to grieve, and after to make glad;
Such fear in love, such love in majesty.
My darkest ways her eyes make clear as day.
What storms so great but Cynthia’s beams appeased?
What rage so fierce, that love could not allay?
Twelve years of my most happy younger days;
But I in them, and they now wasted are:
“Of all which past, the sorrow only stays.”
My mind still feeling sorrowful success;
Even as before a storm the marble cold
Doth by moist tears tempestuous times express,
Which my vain thought in vain sought to recure:
At middle day my sun seemed under land,
When any little cloud did it obscure.
Whenas the sun shines with unwonted warm,
So did my joys melt into secret tears;
So did my heart dissolve in wasting drops:
And as the season of the year outwears,
And heaps of snow from off the mountain tops
So did the time draw on my more despair:
Then floods of sorrow and whole seas of woe
The banks of all my hope did overbear,
Sometime I died; sometime I was distract,
My soul the stage of fancy’s tragedy;
Then furious madness, where true reason lacked,
Oh, heavy heart! who can thee witness bear?
What tongue, what pen, could thy tormenting treat,
But thine own mourning thoughts which present were?
What altered sense conceive the weakest woe,
That tare, that rent, that pierced thy sad heart?
Bound in strong chains doth strive and rage in vain,
Till, tired and breathless, he is forced to rest,—
Finds by contention but increase of pain,
And fiery heat inflamed in swollen breast;
From woe to wrath, from wrath return to woe,
Struggling in vain from love’s subjection;
My fainting spirits sunk, and heart appalled,
My joys and hopes lay bleeding on the ground,
That not long since the highest heaven scaled.
The thoughts of passed times, like flames of hell,
Kindled afresh within my memory
The many dear achievements that befell
Which to describe were but to die in writing;
Ah, those I sought, but vainly, to remove,
And vainly shall, by which I perish living.
The images and forms of worlds past,
Teaching the cause why all those flames that rise
From forms external can no longer last,
Love’s ground, his essence, and his empery,
All slaves to age, and vassals unto time,
Of which repentance writes the tragedy:—
Whose love outflew the fastest flying time,
A beauty that can easily deceive
The arrest of years, and creeping age outclimb.
Time that but works on frail mortality;
A sweetness which woe’s wrongs outwipeth not,
Whom love hath chose for his divinity;
That loseth nought by giving light to all,
That endless shines each where, and endless lasteth,
Blossoms of pride that can nor fade nor fall;
The parents of my sorrow and my envy,
Most deathful and most violent infections;
These be the tyrants that in fetters tie
But glory in their lasting misery—
That, as her beauties would, our woes should dure—
These be the effects of powerful empery.
Yet hath her mind some marks of human race;
Yet will she be a woman for a fashion,
So doth she please her virtues to deface.
An element of waters, to allay
The fiery sunbeams that on earth do beat,
And temper by cold night the heat of day,
Added thereto a change of fantasy,
And left her the affections of her kind,
Yet free from every evil but cruelty.
Write on the tale that sorrow bids thee tell;
Strive to forget, and care no more to know
Thy cares are known, by knowing those too well.
Not as she did appear in days fordone:
In love, those things that were no more may be,
For fancy seldom ends where it begun.
From nature’s course where it did sometime run,
By some small rent or loose part doth begin
To find escape, till it a way hath won;
The forced bounds, and, raging, run at large
In the ancient channels as they wonted were;
Such is of women’s love the careful charge,—
Of long erections such the sudden fall:
One hour diverts, one instant overthrows,
For which our lives, for which our fortune’s thrall
Of which when our fond hopes do most assure,
All is dissolved; our labours come to nought;
Nor any mark thereof there doth endure:
Upon the parched ground by heat updried;
No cooling moisture is perceived at all,
Nor any show or sign of wet doth bide.
The banks of roses smelling precious sweet,
Have but their beauty’s date and timely hours,
And then, defaced by winter’s cold and sleet,
So far as neither fruit nor form of flower
Stays for a witness what such branches bare,
But as time gave, time did again devour,
And change our rising joy to falling care:
When she that from the sun reaves power and light,
Did but decline her beams as discontented,
Converting sweetest days to saddest night,
The person, place, and passages forgotten;
The hardest steel eaten with softest rust,
The firm and solid tree both rent and rotten.
That in our absence were affection’s food,
Are razed out and from the fancy rent;
In highest grace and heart’s dear care that stood,
Our dearest treasures and our heart’s true joys;
The tokens hung on breast and kindly worn,
Are now elsewhere disposed or held for toys.
And others for our sakes then valued dear,
The one forgot, the rest are dear beloved,
When all of ours doth strange or vild appear.
We saw our beauties in, so were they clear;
Belphœbe’s course is now observed no more;
Our ocean seas are but tempestuous waves,
And all things base, that blessed were of late…..
Of harvest past, the ploughman’s eye offends;
He tills again, or tears them up with hands,
And throws to fire as foiled and fruitless ends,
So doth the mind root up all wonted thought,
And scorns the care of our remaining woes;
The sorrows, which themselves for us have wrought,
The ashes are dispersed into the air;
The sighs, the groans of all our past desires
Are clean outworn, as things that never were.
Who looks not back to hear our after-cries:
Where he is not, he laughs at those that mourn;
Whence he is gone, he scorns the mind that dies.
When reason speaks, he, careless, stops his ears;
Whom he hath left, he never grace affords,
But bathes his wings in our lamenting tears.
Whereon I built, and on so dureless trust!
My mind had wounds, I dare not say deceit,
Were I resolved her promise was not just.
I powerless was to alter my desire;
My love is not of time or bound to date;
My heart’s internal heat and living fire
My bound respect was not confined to days;
My vowed faith not set to ended hours;
I love the bearing and not bearing sprays
The incarnate, snow-driven white, and purest azure,
Who from high heaven doth on their fields descend,
Filling their barns with grain, and towers with treasure.
As, while it lasteth, scorns the account of those
Seeking but self-contentment to improve,
And hides, if any be, his inward woes,
The often and unjust perseverance
In deeds of love and state, and every action
From that first day and year of their joy’s entrace.
That did embrace the dust her body bearing,
That loved her, both by fancy and by nature,
That drew, even with the milk in my first sucking,
Have found her as a stranger so severe,
Improving my mishap in each degree;
But love was gone: so would I my life were!
A lion then,—no more a milk-white dove;
A prisoner in her breast I could not be;—
She did untie the gentle chains of love.
Love was no more the love of hiding
It had been such; it was still for the elect;
But I must be the example in love’s story;
This was of all forepast the sad effect.
Made by her love a burthen to my being,
Dost know my error never was forethought,
Or ever could proceed from sense of loving.
I leave the excuse, sith judgment hath been given;
The limbs divided, sundered, and ableeding,
Cannot complain the sentence was uneven.
The only paragon of time’s begetting,
Divine in words, angelical in voice,
That spring of joys, that flower of love’s own setting,
That beauty, braving heavens and earth embalming,
Which after worthless worlds but play on stages,
Such didst thou her long since describe, yet sighing
In heaven’s beauties or in earth’s delight,
For likeness fit to satisfy thy thought:
But what hath it availed thee so to write?
It’s now an idle labour, and a tale
Told out of time, that dulls the hearer’s ears;
A merchandize whereof there is no sale.
She hath resolved, and judged thee long ago.
Thy lines are now a murmuring to her ears,
Like to a falling stream, which, passing slow,
So shall thy painful labours be perused,
And draw on rest, which sometime had regard;
But those her cares thy errors have excused.
So her hard heart, so her estranged mind,
In which above the heavens I once reposed;
So to thy error have her ears inclined,
Holding in mind but only thine offence;
And only now affecteth thy depraving,
And thinks all vain that pleadeth thy defence.
A more desire the heart-blood never nourished;
Her sweetness an affection never fed,
Which more in any age hath ever flourished.
A firmer love, since love on earth had power;
A love obscured, but cannot be forgotten;
Too great and strong for time’s jaws to devour;
Care, wakeful ever of her good estate,
Fear, dreading loss, which sighs and joys not,
A memory of the joys her grace begat;
Of which the cordial sweetness cannot die;
These thoughts, knit up by faith, shall ever last;
These time assays, but never can untie,
Whose joys were drawn but from her happiness,
Whose heart’s high pleasure, and whose mind’s true rest,
Proceeded from her fortune’s blessedness;
In fears, in dreams, in feverous jealousy,
Who long in silence served, and obeyed
With secret heart and hidden loyalty,
Which never age, or nature’s overthrow,
Which never sickness or deformity,
Which never wasting care or wearing woe,
If subject unto these she could have been,—
Which never honour’s bait, or world’s fame,
Achieved by attempts adventurous,
Or aught beneath the sun or heaven’s frame
The essential love of no frail parts compounded,
Though of the same now buried be the joy,
The hope, the comfort, and the sweetness ended,
Work a relapse of passion, and remain
Of my sad heart the sorrow-sucking bees;
The wrongs received, the frowns persuade in vain.
And are in others the true cure of liking,
The salves that heal love’s wounds, and do amend
Consuming woe, and slake our hearty sighing,
External fancy time alone recureth:
All whose effects do wear away with ease
Love of delight, while such delight endureth;
Stays by the pleasure, but no longer stays….
And is thereof not only the best part,
But into it the essence is disposed:
Oh love! (the more my woe) to it thou art
Even as the sun unto the frozen ground;
Even as the sweetness to the incarnate rose;
Even as the centre in each perfect round:
As heat to fire, as light unto the sun;
Oh love! it is but vain to say thou were;
Ages and times cannot thy power outrun.
Which, being by nature made an idle thought,
Began even then to take immortal kind,
When first her virtues in thy spirits wrought.
Because it is become thy cause of being;
Whatever error may obscure that love,
Whatever frail effect in mortal living,
What absence, time, or injuries effect,
What faithless friends or deep dissembled art
Present to feed her most unkind suspect.
Yet as the air in deep caves underground
Is strongly drawn when violent heat hath vent,
Great clefts therein, till moisture do abound,
And then the same, imprisoned and uppent,
So, in the centre of my cloven heart—
My heart, to whom her beauties were such wonder—
Lies the sharp poisoned head of that love’s dart
Thence drawn it cannot be, or therein known:
There, mixed with my heart-blood, the fretting rust
The better part hath eaten and outgrown.
Of that which was, or that which is, to treat?
What I possess is but the same I sought:
My love was false, my labours were deceit.
A fraud bought at the price of many woes;
A guile, whereof the profits unto me—
Could it be thought premeditate for those?
The sorrow-worn face, the pensive mind;
The external shews what may the internal be:
Cold care hath bitten both the root and rind.
Harsh is the voice of woe and sorrow’s sound:
Complaints cure not, and tears do but allay
Griefs for a time, which after more abound.
Is but a loss of labour and of rest:
The links which time did break of hearty bands
Seek not the sun in clouds when it is set….
On highest mountains, where those cedars grew,
Against whose banks the troubled ocean beat,
Into a soil far off themselves remove.
On Sestus’ shore, Leander’s late resort,
Hero hath left no lamp to guide her love.
She sleeps thy death, that erst thy danger sighed;
Strive then no more; bow down thy weary eyes—
Eyes which to all these woes thy heart have guided.
Sorrow draws weakly, where love draws not too:
Woe’s cries sound nothing, but only in love’s ear.
Do then by dying what life cannot do.
To feed on hills, or dales, where likes them best,
Of what the summer or the spring-time yields,
For love and time hath given thee leave to rest.
By often storms and winter’s many blasts,
All torn and rent becomes misfortune’s prey;
False hope my shepherd’s staff, now age hath brast
To sing her praises and my woe upon,—
Despair hath often threatened to the fire,
As vain to keep now all the rest are gone.
Yet every foot, old thoughts turn back mine eyes:
Constraint me guides, as old age draws a stone
Against the hill, which over-weighty lies
My steps are backward, gazing on my loss,
My mind’s affection and my soul’s sole love,
Not mixed with fancy’s chaff or fortune’s dross.
And I her gave, and she returned again,
As it was hers; so let His mercies be
Of my last comforts the essential mean.
Her love hath end; my woe must ever last.
My days’ delights, my spring-time joys fordone,
Which in the dawn and rising sun of youth
Had their creation, and were first begun,
Present my mind, which takes my time’s account,
The grief remaining of the joy it had.
And now run out in other’s happiness,
Bring unto those new joys and new-born days.
Which sees the birth and burial of all else,
And holds that power with which she first begun,
By fortune, and by times tempestuous,
Which, by her virtue, once fair fruit have born;
Green from the ground, and flowers even out of stone,
By virtue lasting over time and date,
Having compassion of unburied bones,
Cleaves to mischance, and unrepaired loss.