Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/60

56 Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear Thy voice–my own affrights me with its echoes.

He who reads these lines enjoys for a moment the powers of a poet; he feels what he remembers to have felt before, but he feels it with great increase of sensibility; he recognizes a familiar image, but meets it again amplified and expanded, embellished with beauty, and enlarged with majesty.

Yet could the author, who appears here to have enjoyed the confidence of Nature, lament the death of queen Mary in lines like these:

The rocks are cleft, and new-descending rills Furrow the brows of all th’ impending hills. The water-gods to floods their rivulets turn, And each, with streaming eyes, supplies his wanting urn. The Fauns forsake the woods, the Nymphs the grove, And round the plain in sad distractions rove: In prickly brakes their tender limbs they tear, And leave on thorns their locks of golden hair. With their sharp nails, themselves the Satyrs wound, And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground. Lo Pan himself, beneath a blasted oak, Dejected lies, his pipe in pieces broke.