CCCCLXI IN THE SHADOWS. 3 ОСТОВЕ The weary rain falls ceaseless, while the day No more, no more for me the Spring shall make The death from out her heart-O God, I die! DAVID GRAY 1838-1861 CCCCLXII DIE down, O dismal day! and let me live; And come, blue deeps! magnificently strown O God! for one clear day, a snowdrop, and sweet air! OLIVER MADOX BROWN 1855-1874 234 N° A Treasury of English Sonnets CCCCLXIII O more these passion-worn faces shall men's eyes Vague wailing shudder with their dying sighs. As a deserted wind-tossed sea's foam-trace Life's chilled boughs emptied by death's autumn-blast. NOTES Sir Thomas Wyat and the Earl of Surrey. 'In the latter end of the same kings raigne' (Henry VIII's), writes Puttenham, 'sprong up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th' elder & Henry Earle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude & homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile."1 The poems of Wyat and Surrey, fellowsingers whose 'sweet breath,' more immediately than Dan Chaucer's, 'Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth,' 2 though extensively circulated in manuscript, and possibly on loose printed sheets also, during the lives of their authors, were not published in the ordinary sense of the word until 1557, when they appeared, with others, in Tottel's Miscellany. The two poets have often been elaborately compared, but by none better than Mr. Stopford Brooke, thus succinctly The subjects of Wyatt and Surrey were chiefly lyrical, and the fact that they imitated the same model has made some likeness between them. Like their personal characters, however, the poetry of Wyatt is the more thoughtful and the more strongly felt, but Surrey's has a sweeter movement and a livelier fancy. Both did this great thing for English verse-they chose an exquisite model, and in imitating it “ corrected the ruggedness of English poetry.' One consequence of this difference in character and temperament was that Wyat easily excelled 2 The Arte of English Poesie, 1589, Lib. i, chap. xxxi, p. 48. Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other. 1557. a English Literature Primer, 1876, p. 58. |