The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.
§ 14. His “divine” poems
The only works of Drayton which remain to be considered are the three “divine” poems which formed part of the volume of 1630. Moses, his Birth and Miracles, the revised version of Moyses in a Map of his Miracles, of 1604, has been mentioned above. The other two were Noahs Floud and David and Goliah, both written in the rimed couplets of decasyllables which Drayton had done much to beat into shape. It is notable that, in these last of Drayton’s poems, we catch once more the Elizabethan note. The description of David carries us back to the Adonis of Shakespeare’s poem, and there are passages of the same elaborate ornament that is found in Endimion and Phœbe. It has been noticed, also, that, in the grand invocation at the beginning of Noahs Floud, there is “the presentiment of a greater sacred diction”—that of Milton.