Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649)

Extracts from the Poems: Song: ‘Phœbus, arise’

PHŒBUS, arise,

And paint the sable skies

With azure, white, and red;

Rouse Memnon’s mother from her Tithon’s bed,

That she thy cáreer may with roses spread;

The nightingales thy coming each where sing;

Make an eternal spring,

Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;

Spread forth thy golden hair

In larger locks than thou wast wont before,

And, emperor like, decore

With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:

Chase hence the ugly night,

Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light.

This is that happy morn

That day, long-wished day,

Of all my life so dark

(If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn,

And fates not hope betray),

Which, only white, deserves

A diamond for ever should it mark:

This is the morn should bring unto this grove

My love, to hear and recompense my love.

Fair king, who all preserves,

But show thy blushing beams,

And thou two sweeter eyes

Shalt see, than those which by Peneus’ streams

Did once thy heart surprise;

Nay, suns, which shine as clear

As thou when two thou did to Rome appear.

Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise;

If that ye, winds, would hear

A voice surpassing far Amphion’s lyre,

Your stormy chiding stay;

Let zephyr only breathe,

And with her tresses play,

Kissing sometimes these purple ports of death.

The winds all silent are,

And Phœbus in his chair,

Ensaffroning sea and air,

Makes vanish every star:

Night like a drunkard reels

Beyond the hills to shun his flaming wheels;

The fields with flow’rs are deck’d in every hue,

The clouds bespangle with bright gold their blue:

Here is the pleasant place,

And every thing, save her, who all should grace.