As midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon,
Or hawk of the tower;
As patient and as still,
And as full of good will,
As fair Isiphil,
Coliander,
Sweet Pomander,
Good Cassander;

Steadfast of thought,
Well made, well wrought,
Far may be sought,
Ere you can find
So courteous, so kind,
As Merry Margaret,
This midsummer flower,
Gentle as falcon,
Or hawk of the tower.

EARL OF SURREY.

HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY, was the grandson of the Duke of Norfolk who, for his services in the battle of Flodden, regained the title of Duke, lost by his father at Bosworth, where 'Dickon, his master, was bought and sold.'. Great obscurity hangs over the personal history of the accomplished Surrey, and the few known facts have been blended with a mass of fable. He was born about the year 1517; in 1526 was made cup-bearer to the king; in 1532 accompanied Henry on his famoļis visit to Boulogne; and the same year was contracted in marriage to Lady Francis Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. On-account of the youth of Surrey, the marriage, however, did not take place till 1535. In March 1536 his son Thomas was born. In 1519 he accompanied his father, commander of the English forces, to Scotland, and assisted in the campaign which deVilstated the Scottish Borders. Surrey was present at the burning of Kelso. In the fubsequent war with France, Surrey was again distinguished; but the army he commaired was overpowered by numbers near St. Etienne in January 1545–6, and shortly aftewards he was virtually recalled. The enmity of Lord Hertford is supposed to have aggravated the royal displeasure towards Surrey. In December 1546 he was committed to the Tower; lie was tried on 13th January 1545-6, and executed on the 21st. Henry VIII. died a week afterwards, on the 28th. The charge against Surrey was that he had assumed the royal arms—the arms of Edward the Confessor. When he did so Henry was on his deathbed, and the assumprion was part of'il scheme to claim the regency for tlie Howards instead of the Sey

The poems of this chivalrous and unfortunate nobleman were not printed until ten years after his death. They were published in a volume entitled 'Tuttel's Miscellany,' 1557, the first collection of English poetry by different writers, and which ran through six editions in seven years. The love-strains of Surrey, addressed to some unknown Geraldine, were adopted by Nash, the well-known dramatic poet and miscellaneous writer, as the basis of a series of romantic fictions, in which the noble poet was represented as travelling in Italy, proclaiming the beauty of his Geraldine, and defending her matchless charms in tilt and tournament. At the court of the emperor, Surrey was said to have met with the famous magician, Cornelius Agrippa, who shewed him, in a necromantic mirror, his Geraldine languishing on a couch reading one of his sonnets! The whole of this knightly legend was a fabrication by Nash, but it long held possession of the popular mind. All that is known of the poet's Geraldine is contained in this sonnet:

From Tuscane came my lady's worthy race;
Fair Florence was sometime their ancient seat;
The western isle whose pleasant shore doth face
Wild Camber's cliffs, did give her lively heat:
Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast;
Her sire, an earl; her dame of princes' blood:
From tender years, in Britain doth she rest
With king's child, where she tasteth costly food.
Hunsdon did first present her to my eyen;
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight:
Hampton me taught to wish her first for mine;
And Windsor, alas! doth chase me from her sight.
Her beauty of kiud, her virtue from above-

Happy is he that can obtain her love! The description is here so minute and specific, that, if actually real, the lady must bave been known to many of the readers of Surrey's manuscript verses. Horace Walpole endeavoured to prove that the Geraldine of the poet was Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald; but Lady Elizabeth was only twelve or thirteen years old when Surrey 18 supposed to have fallen in love with her. Mr. Hallam has said tha: Surrey did much for his own country and his native language, but that his taste is more striking than his genius. His poetry is certainly remarkable for correctness of style and purity of expression. He was among the first, if not the very first, to introduce blank verse into our poetry, and to reject the pedantry which overdows in the pages of his predecessors. Prisoner in Windsor, he recounteth his Pleasure there passed.

So crreprison how could betide, alas!

As proud Windsor ? where I, iu lust and joy,
Witka I'ng's son, my childish years did pass,

In greatur feast thau Priam's son of Troy:
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour!

The arge green courts where we were wont to hove (1)
With eyes caat up into the Maiden Tower,

And easy sighs such as folk draw in love.
The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue;

The dances short, long tales of great delight,
With words and ooks that tigers could but rue,

Where each of us did plead the other's right.
The palm-play, where, despoiled for the game,

With dazed eyes oft we by gleams of love,
Have missed the ball and got sight of our dame,

To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above.
The gravel ground, with sleeves tied on the helm

of foaming horse, (2) with swords and friendly hearts;
With cheer, as though one should another whelm,

Where we have fought, and chased oft with darts; I koror, loiter. 2 À lover tied the sleove of his mistress on the boad of his horro.

With silver drops the mead yet spread for ruth,

In active games of niinbleness and strength,
Where we did strain, trained with swarms of youth,

Our tender limbs that yet shot up in length:
The secret groves which oft we made resound,

Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise,
Recording oft what grace each one had found,

What hope of speed, what dread of long delays:
The wild forest, the clothed holts with green,

With reins availed (1) and swift ybreathed horse ;
With cry of hounds, and merry blasts between,

Where we did chase the fearful hart cf force.
The wide vales, eke, that harboured tis each night,

Wherewith, alas, reviveth in my breast,
The sweet accord such sleeps as yet delight,

The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest;
The secret thonghts imparted with such trust,

The wanton talk, the divers change of play,
The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just;

Wherewith we passed the winter nights away.
And with this thought, the blood forsakes the face

The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue,
The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas,

Upsupped have, thus I my plaint renew :
O place of bliss ! renewer of my woes,

Give me accounts, where is iny noble fere; (2)
Whom la thy walls, thou dost each night inciose;

To other leaf, (-) but unto me most dear:
Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rule,

Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint.
Thus 1 alone, where all my freedom grew,

In prisou pine with bondage and restraint,
“And with remembrance of the greater grief
To banish the less, I find my chief relief.

Hou no Age is content with his Own Estate, and how the Age of Chil

dren is the happiest, if they had skill to understand it. Laid in my quiet bed,

The young man eke that feels In study as it were,

His bones with paius opprest, I saw within my troubled head

How he would be a rich old man, A heap of thoughts appear.

To live and lie at rest : And every thonght did shew

The rich o! inan that sees So lively in mine eyes,

His end draw on so sore, That now I sighed, and then I smiled, How he would be a boy again, As cause of thoughts did rise.

To live so much the more ! I saw the little boy,

Whereat full oft I smiled, In thought how oft that he

To show a}l these three, Did wish of God, to scape the rod,

From boy to mali, from man to boy, A tall young man to be.

Would chop and change degree:

And musing thus, I think,

* Bids thee lay hand, and feel The case is very strange.

Them hanging on my chin.
That man from wealth, to live in woe, The which do write two ages past,
Doth ever seek to change.

The third now coming in.
Thus thoughtful as I lay,

Hang up, therefore, the bit
I saw my withered skin,

Of thy young wanton time;
How it doth shew my dented thews, And thou that therein beaten art,
The flesh was worn so thin;

The happiest life detine.'
And eke my toothless chaps,

Whereat I sighed, and said:
The gates of my right way,

Farewell, my wonted joy,
That opes and shuts as I do speak, Truss up thy pack, and trudge from
Do thus unto me say:

To every little boy ; "The white and hoarish hairs,

• And tell them thus for me, The messenger of age,

Their time must happy is,
Thai show, lines of true belief, If to their time they reason had,
That this lif: doth assuage;

To know the truth of this.'
The Means to Attain a Happy Life.
Martial, the things that do attain

The mean diet, nu delicate fare;
The nappy lif, be these, I find,

True wisdom joined with simpleness ; The riches lift, not got with pain;, The night discharged of all ci e

The fruitful ground, the quiet mind, Where wine the wit may not oppress. The equal friend, no grudge, no strife; The faithful wife, without debate;

No charge of rule, nor governance; Such sleeps as may beguile the nicht;
Without disease, the healthful life; Contented with thine own estate,
The household of continuance:

Ne wish for Death, ne fear his might. We add a few lines of Surrey's blank verse, from his translation of the Second Book of the Æneid':

It was the time when, granted from the gods,
The first sleep creeps most sweet in weary folk,
Lo, in my dream, before mine cyes methought
With rueful cheer I saw where Hector stood
(Out of whose eyes there gushed streams of tears),
Drawn at a car as he of te had been,
Distained with bloody dust, whose feet were bowl'n (1)
With the strait cords whurewith they haled him.
Ah me, what one! That Hector h w unlike
Which erst returned clad with Achilles' spoils,
Or vihen he threw in o t}. Greekish ships
The Trojan flame !-So was his beard defiled,
His crisp locks all clustered with his blood,
With all su wounds as many he received
About the walls of that his native town.

SIR THOMAS WYATT.

In 'Tottel's Miscellany' were also first printel the poems of SIR THOMAS WYATT (1503-1542), a distinguished courtier and man of wit, who was fortunate enough to escape the capricious tyranny of Henry VIII., and who may be said to have died in the king's service. While travelling on a mission to France, and riding fast in the heat of summer, he was attacked with a fever that proved mortal. Wyatt enter.

1 The participle of the Saxon verb to bolge, which gives the derivation of bulge. Tyrulitt's Chuucer,

tained a secret passion for Anne Boleyn, whom he has commem. orated in his verse. His satires are more spirited than Surrey's, and one of his lighter pieces, his 'Ode to a Lute,' is a fine amatory effusion. He was, however, inferior to his noble friend in general poetical power. The Lover's Lute cannot be blamed, though it sing of his Lady's Un

kindness.

Blame not my Lute! for he must sound

Of this or that as liketh me;
For lack of wit the Lute is bound

To give such tunes as pleaseth me;
Though my songs be somewhat strange,
And speak such words as touch my change,

Blame not my Lute !
My Lute, alas ! does not offend,

Though that perforce he must agree
To sound such tunes as I intend

To sing to them that heareth me;
Then though my songs be somewhat plain, .
And toucheth some that use to feign,

Blame not my Lute !
My Lute and strings may not deny,

But as I strike they must obey;
Break not them so wrongfully,

But wreak thyself some other way;
But though the songs which I indite
Do quit thy change with rightful spite,

Blame not my lute!
Spite asketh spite, and changing change,

And falsed faith must needs be known;
And faults so great, the case so strange;

Of right it must abroad be blown;
Then since that by thine own desert
My songs do tell how true thou art,

Blame not my Lute!

Blame but thyself that hast misdone,

And well deserved to have blame;
Change thou thy way, so evil begone,

And then my Lute shall sound that same;
But if till then my fingers play,
By thy desert their wonted way

Blame not my Lute!
Farewell! unknown ; for though thou bread

My strings in spite with great disdain,
Yet have I found out, for thy sake,

Strings for to string my Lute again:
And if perchance this silly rhyme
Do make thee blush at any time,

Blame not my Luta!