Michael Drayton (1563-1631). To the Virginian Voyage. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

Verse > Anthologies > William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. > The Book of Elizabethan Verse

CONTENTS · GLOSSARY · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

To the Virginian Voyage

By Michael Drayton (1563–1631)


YOU 1 brave heroic minds
Worthy your country’s name,
That honour still pursue;
Go and subdue!
Whilst loitering hinds	5
Lurk here at home with shame:

Britons, you stay too long:
Quickly aboard bestow you,
And with a merry gale
Swell your stretch’d sail	10
With vows as strong
As the winds that blow you.

Your course securely steer,
West and by south forth keep!
Rocks, lee-shores, nor shoals	15
When Eolus scowls 2
You need not fear;
So absolute the deep.

And cheerfully at sea
Success you still entice	20
To get the pearl and gold,
And ours to hold
Virginia,
Earth’s only paradise.

Where nature hath in store	25
Fowl, venison, and fish,
And the fruitfull’st soil
Without your toil
Three harvests more,
All greater than your wish.	30

And the ambitious vine
Crowns with his purple mass
The cedar reaching high
To kiss the sky,
The cypress, pine,	35
And useful sassafras.

To whom the Golden Age
Still nature’s laws doth give,
No other cares attend,
But them to defend	40
From winter’s rage,
That long there doth not live.

When as the luscious smell
Of that delicious land
Above the seas that flows	45
The clear wind throws,
Your hearts to swell
Approaching the dear strand;

In kenning of the shore
(Thanks to God first given)	50
O you the happiest men,
Be frolic then!
Let cannons roar,
Frighting the wide heaven.

And in regions far,	55
Such heroes bring ye forth
As those from whom we came;
And plant our name
Under that star
Not known unto our North.	60

And as there plenty grows
Of laurel everywhere—
Apollo’s sacred tree—
You it may see
A poet’s brows	65
To crown, that may sing there.

Thy Voyages attend,
Industrious Hakluyt, 3
Whose reading shall inflame
Men to seek fame,	70
And much commend
To after times thy wit.

Note 1. Of this ode, Mr. Oliver Elton (Michael Drayton, A Critical Study, new ed., 1905) says: “Often it has the true music, as of the harp speeding a vessel that is launched with colours flying to win some new continent of odourous tropic fruits and illimitable gold. The Virginian Voyage has some wonderful words, sassafras, Hackluit, that make the fortune of their rhymes, and the relief is heightened by the subtle—not really prosaic—soberness of their epithets: industrious Hackluit, useful sassafras, like words almost in the ordinary pitch interjected in a chant. This ode runs more easily than the others in spite of the lacework of its rhymes:

	You brave heroic minds,
	Worthy your country’s name,
	That honour still pursue,
	Go, and subdue,
	Whilst loitering hinds
	Lurk here at home for shame.

The oars plash to the loud and hopeful thrumming of the player, as he faces outward to where beyond the Pillars a far world awaits him, one day to be populous with poets and heroes, the descendants of the high-hearted voyagers.” [back]

Note 2. Where Eolus scowls: Æolus, the deity of the winds. [back]

Note 3. Industrious Hakluyt: “The Collection of Voyages, which was published by Hakluyt in 1582, disclosed the vastness of the world itself, the infinite number of the races of mankind, the variety of their laws, their customs, their religions, their very instincts. We see the influence of this new and richer knowledge of the world, not only in the life and richness which it gave to the imagination of the time, but in the immense interest which from this moment attached itself to man.” (Green’s England, vol. ii., bk. vi., p. 462.) [back]

CONTENTS · GLOSSARY · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Click here to shop the Bartleby Bookstore.

Shakespeare · Bible · Saints · Anatomy · Harvard Classics · Lit. History · Quotations · Poetry