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Welcome, pure thoughts! welcome, ye silent Groves!
These guests, these courts, my soul most dearly loves:
Now the wing'd people of the skie shall sing
My cheerfull Anthems to the gladsom Spring:
A Pray'r-book now shall be my looking-glasse,
In which I will adore sweet Vertue's face.
Here dwell no hatefull looks, no Palace cares,

No broken Vows dwell here, nor pale fac'd Fears :*
Then here I'l sit, and sigh my hot loves folly,
And learn t' affect an holy melancholy;

And if Contentment be a stranger then,
I'l ne'r look for it, but in heaven, again.

In Sancroft's MS. these lines run thus ;

"Here dwell noe heating loues, noe palsy feares,
Noe short ioyes purchas'd with æternall teares.
Here will I sitt, & sigh my hott youth's folly," &c.

From this and several other passages, it would seem that the text which Sancroft copied underwent a revisal from the author, before it fell into Walton's hands. In most instances, the changes were for the better; bat perhaps not in this.

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[ASCRIBED TO SIR WALTER RALEIGH.]

[FROM MS. Ashm. 781, p. 163. It has been printed before in the Oxford edition of Raleigh's Works, apparently from the same MS. and with the title, " Moral Advice," viii. 732. I suspect that it was written against him, not by him.]

ATER thy plants with grace devine, and hope to live for aye;

Then to thy Sauiour Christe incline; in him make stedfast stay:

Rawe is the reason that doth lye* within an Atheists

head,

Which saith the soule of man doth dye, when that the boddies dead.

S' WA: RALEIgh.

The first and seventh words of this line might conceal a secret mark of ownership, like that of Dyer's,-" Dy er thou let his name be known," which, however, did not save that piece from the younger Donne. (See Malone's Shakesp. by Bosw. ii. 220, 581-2.) But this vile pun (if it is one) is more likely to have been the work of an enemy. Who would make such an execrable jest on his own name?

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A VISION VPON THIS CONCEIPT OF THE FAERY QUEENE.

[BY SIR WALTER RALEIGH.]

["I HAVE been always singularly struck and delighted with the tone, imagery, and expression of this extraordinary sonnet. The author must at this time have been deeply read in works of poetical fancy, and highly imbued with their spirit. Milton had deeply studied this sonnet; for in his compositions of the same class, he has evidently, more than once,* the very rhythm and construction, as well as cast of thought, of this noble, though brief, composition."-BRYDGES.

The Sonnet was first printed in 1590, at the head of the Commendatory Poems appended to the first three books of Spenser's Faery Queen (p. 596), and immediately after the

The chief instance is in Milton's Sonnet "On his deceased Wife":"Methought I saw my late espoused saint," &c.

Mr. Todd (Spenser, ii. excv.) has mentioned an imitation of Raleigh's Sonnet which was printed as early as 1594. As an account of the intercourse between Raleigh and Spenser is given at length by the biographers of both, it is needless in this case to make any particular references.

letter which Spenser addressed to Raleigh in explanation of his plan. It is followed by a second piece, entitled "Another of the same," to which the initials "W. R." are subjoined, and which closes with the following couplet :

"Of me no lines are lou'd, nor letters are of price,

Of all which speak our English tongue, but those of thy deuice."

While it is so difficult to ascertain what Poems Raleigh really wrote, it is fortunate that the noblest of all those ascribed to him can be so well authenticated. The piece from Davison, which is given next, is added for the same reason which induced me to insert this Sonnet,—that the reader may find at least some pieces in this volume, of which Raleigh may be regarded as the undisputed author.]

M

E thought I saw the graue where Laura lay,
Within that Temple, where the vestall flame
Was wont to burne; and passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of liuing fame,
Whose tombe faire loue and fairer vertue kept;
All suddeinly I saw the Faery Queene:

At whose approch the soule of Petrarke wept ;
And from thenceforth, those graces were not seene,
For they this Queene attended: in whose steed
Obliuion laid him downe on Lauras herse:
Hereat the hardest stones were seene to bleed,
And grones of buried ghostes the heuens did
Where Homers spright did tremble all for griefe,
And curst th' accesse of that celestiall theife.

perse,

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A POESIE TO PROVE AFFECTION IS
NOT LOVE.

[BY SIR WALTER RALEIGH.]

["THE only poem printed in the Rhapsody," says Sir Harris Nicolas, "which was undoubtedly written by Raleigh, is, A Poesy to prove Affection is not Love." Yet while so many pieces are ascribed to him without any evidence at all, this undoubted poem has not hitherto been admitted into any general Collection of his Works. When Sir Egerton Brydges edited his Poems in 1813, he took no notice of Davison,t-probably because he designed to publish a second volume, which was to include a very large portion of the Poeticall Rhapsodie. This intention appears to have been frustrated by the discovery, that Raleigh could not be

Biogr. Not. prefixed to his edit. of Davison, p. ci. The omission of the initials" W. R." in the fourth edit. of Davison is no argument against his claim; for there is a very general (though not universal) omission of signatures throughout that volume.

+ Except that he inserted in a note the copy of "The Lie" which is found in Davison.

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