She first considered which was better:
To send it back, or burn the letter:
But guessing that it might import,
Though nothig else, at least her sport,
She open'd it, and read it out,
With many a smile and leering flout;
Resolv'd to answer it in kind,
And thus perform'd what she design'd.
Richard Crashaw wurde wahrscheinlich zu London um 1615, wo sein Vater ein hohes geistliches Amt bekleidete, geboren. Er studirte in Cambridge, wo er sich dem geistlichen Stande widmete und als Prediger auszeichnete, aber 1644 durch die Armee des Parlaments vertrieben wurde. Nach Frankreich geflüchtet, trat er zum katholischen Glauben über und ward hier von Cowley im äussersten Elend gefunden und der verbannten Königin Henriette Marie empfohlen, die ihm den Rath gab, in Italien sein Glück zu versuchen. Es gelang ihm auch in Rom Geheimschreiber des Cardinal Palotta und später Canonicus an der Lorettokirche zu werden. Er starb daselbst 1650.
Seine Gedichte erschienen zuerst London 1646, sind später öfter wieder aufgelegt worden und zum grössten Theil religiösen Inhalts. Sie zeichnen sich durch Begeisterung, reiche Phantasie, Kraft und Anmuth aus, sind aber, im falschen Geschmack jener Zeit, nicht frei von Künstelei und Gesuchtheit.
The Hymn.
O gloriosa domina!
Hail most high, most humble one!
Above the world; below thy Son,
Whose blush the moon beauteously marres,
And staines the timerous light of starres.
He that made all things had not done,
Till he had made himself thy Son.
The whole world's host would be thy guest,
And board himself at thy rich brest;
O boundless hospitality!
The feast of all things feeds on thee.
The first Eve, mother of our fall,
E're she bore any one, slew all.
Of her unkind gift might we have
The inheritance of a hasty grave;
Quick buryed in the wanton tomb
Of one forbidden bitt;
Had not a better fruit forbidden it;
Had not thy healthfull womb
The world's new eastern window bin,
And given us heaven again in giving him.
Thine was the rosy dawn that sprung the day,
Which renders all the starres she stole away.
Let then the aged world be wise, and all
Prove nobly, here, unnaturall:
'Tis gratitude to forgett that other,
And call the maiden Eve their mother.
Yee redeem'd nations farr and near,
Applaud your happy selves in her,
(All you to whom this love belongs)
And keep't alive with lasting songs.
Let hearts and lippes speak lowd, and say,
Hail, door was shutt, the fountain seal'd;
Yet light was seen and life reveal'd;
The fountain seal'd, yet life found way.
Glory to thee, great virgin's Son,
In bosom of thy Father's blisse:
The same to thee, sweet Spirit be done;
As ever shall be, was, and is,
An Ode, which was prefixed to a Prayer
Booke given to a young gentlewoman.
Loe, here a little volume, but great booke,
A nest of new-borne sweetes,
Whose native fires disdaining
To lye thus folded and complaining
Of these ignoble sheetes,
And every day
Seize her sweet prey:
All fresh and fragrant as he rises,
Dropping with a balmy showre
A delicious dew of spices.
O let the blisseful heart hold fast
Her heav'nly armeful, she shall tast,
At once ten thousand paradices;
She shall have power
To rifle and deflower
The rich and roseall spring of those rare sweets,
Which with a swelling bosome there she meets.
Boundlesse and infinite bottomlesse treasures,
Of pure inebriating pleasures.
Happy proofe! she shall discover
What joy, what blisse,
How many heav'ns at once it is,
To have her God become her lover.
Sir John Denham ward 1615 zu Dublin, wo sein Vater Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer war, geboren, erhielt seine Erziehung in London und Oxford und widmete sich dann der Rechtsgelehrsamkeit. Das Spiel war seine vorherrschende Leidenschaft; um seinen Vater zu versöhnen schrieb er schon früh eine Abhandlung gegen dasselbe, liess aber doch nicht von ihm ab. 1641 trat er zu Aller Erstaunen mit einer Tragödie "The Sophy" hervor, die von seinen glänzenden Fähigkeiten zeugte. Bald nachher wurde er Gouverneur von Farnham-Castle und zeigte sich überhaupt sein ganzes Leben hindurch als entschiedener Loyalist. Die Entdeckung einer geheimen Correspondenz mit Cowley zwang ihn zu Karl II. zu fliehen, mit dem er später in sein Vaterland zurückkehrte. Er ward Oberaufseher der königlichen Gebäude und Ritter des Bathordens. Eine unglückliche Ehe beraubte ihn eine Zeit lang des Verstandes, doch ward er wieder gänzlich hergestellt. Er starb 1668 und erhielt ein Begräbniss in der Westminster-Abtei.
Eine vollständige Ausgabe seiner poetischen Werke erschien London 1684 und nochmals 1704 in 8. Sie finden sich ferner im 5. Bande von Anderson's Sammlung. Von den englischen Kritikern wird er als einer der älteren Klassiker sehr gefeiert. Seine bedeutendste Leistung ist das descriptive Gedicht Cooper's hill, mit dem er die Landschaftsmalerei zuerst in die englische Poesie einführte. Er zeichnet sich durch geistreiche Eleganz aus, doch witzelt er zu gern und es fehlt ihm an Tiefe des Gefühls und Kraft der Phantasie. Von minderem Werthe sind seine übrigen Dichtungen, unter denen die Elegie auf Cowley's Tod als die gelungenste erscheint.
From Cooper's hill.
Description of the Thames.
My eye descending from the Hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton vallies strays.
Thames! the most lov'd of all the Ocean's sons,
By his old sire, to his embraces runs,
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity;
Though with those streams he no resemblance
hold,
And hatches plenty for th' ensuing spring;
Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay,
Like mothers which their infants overlay;
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.
No unexpected inundations spoil
The mower's hopes, or mock the ploughman's
toil;
But God-like his unweary'd bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
Nor are his blessings to his banks confin'd,
But free and common as the sea or wind;
When he, to boast or to disperse his stores,
Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,
Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold:
His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
Search not his bottom, but survey his shore,
O'er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing,¦ Visits the world, and in his flying tow'rs
Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours; A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Finds wealth where 'tis, bestows it where it Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows,
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat;
The common fate of all that's high or great.
Low at his foot a spacious plain is plac'd,
Between the mountain and the stream embrac'd,
Which shade and shelter from the Hill derives,
While the kind river wealth and beauty gives,
Cities in deserts, woods in cities, plants.
So that to us no thing, no place, is strange,
While his fair bosom is the world's exchange.
O could I flow like thee! and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme;
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not And in the mixture of all these appears
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full.
Heav'n her Eridanus no more shall boast,
Whose fame in thine, like lesser current, 's lost:
Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove's abodes,
To shine among the stars, and bathe the gods.
Here Nature whether more intent to please
Us or herself with strange varieties,
(For things of wonder give no less delight
To the wise Maker's than beholder's sight;
Though these delights from several causes move,
For so our children, thus our friends, we love)
Wisely she knew the harmony of things,
As well as that of sounds, from discord springs:
Such was the discord which did first disperse
Form, order, beauty, through the universe;
While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists,
All that we have, and that we are, subsists;
While the steep horrid roughness of the wood
Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood,
Such huge extremes when Nature doth unite,
Wonder from thence results, from thence
light.
The stream is so transparent, pure,
and clear,
That had the self-enamour'd youth gaz'd here,
So fatally deceiv'd he had not been,
While he the bottom, not his face, had seen.
But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
Variety, which all the rest endears.
A tablet stood of that abstersive tree
Where Aethiop's swarthy bird did build her nest,
Inlaid it was with Libyan ivory,
Drawn from the jaws of Afric's prudent beast.
Two kings like Saul, much taller than the rest,
Their equal armies draw into the field;
Till one take th' other pris'ner they contest;
Courage and fortune must to conduct yield.
This game the Persian Magi did invent,
The force of Eastern wisdom to express;
From thence to busy Europeans sent
And styl'd by modern Lombards Pensive Chess.
Yet some that fled from Troy to Rome report,
de-Penthesilea Priam did oblige;
Her Amazons his Trojans taught this sport,
To pass the tedious hours of ten years' siege.
There she presents herself, whilst kings and
peers
Look gravely on whilst fierce Bellona fights;
Yet maiden modesty her motion steers,
Nor rudely skips o'er bishops heads like knights.
Abraham Cowley, der nachgeborne Sohn eines Spezereihändlers, ward 1618 in London geboren. Seine Mutter liess ihm eine sehr sorgfältige Erziehung geben, worauf er in Cambridge studirte und promovirte, jedoch vom Parlamente vertrieben ward und sich nach Oxford begab. Bald nachher folgte er als Geheimschreiber des Earl von Albany der vertriebenen Königin nach Frankreich und ward mit grossem Vertrauen vielfach bei ihren Angelegenheiten beschäftigt. Als er 1656 nach England zurückkehrte, nahm man ihn als Spion gefangen, doch liess man ihn wieder frei und er lebte nun während des Protectorates dort ungestört als Privatmann. Nach der Restauration wurden
seine Dienste mit Undank belohnt; er übernahm daher eine Pachtung, brachte den Rest seines Lebens in der Einsamkeit zu und starb am 28. Juli 1667. Seine Leiche ward mit grosser Feierlichkeit in der Westminster - Abtei beigesetzt.
Cowley's Werke sind oft erschienen; die beste Ausgabe derselben ist die von J. Aikin mit Anmerkungen besorgte: London 1802. 3 Bde in 8. Als Dichter zeichnet er sich vorzüglich in der lyrischen Poesie aus, der er einen bisher in England fast noch unbekannten Aufschwung durch Kühnheit der Gedanken und Kraft der Sprache verlieh; seine Oden sind als die ersten vorzüglichen Leistungen auf diesem Gebiete zu betrachten, doch ist er auch hier von Gesuchtheit und Künstelei nicht freizusprechen. Ein grösseres episches Gedicht, die Davideis, liess er unvollendet, auch steht es seinen lyrischen Poesieen bei Weitem nach.
Auch als Prosaist und als lateinischer Dichter erwarb sich Cowley wohlverdienten Ruhm. Seine Schrift gegen Cromwell, eine didactische Satyre und seine übrigen prosaischen Aufsätze sind in ihrer Art vortrefflich.
In a deep Vision's intellectual scene,
Beneath a bow'r for sorrow made,
Th' uncomfortable shade
Of the black yew's unlucky green,
Mix'd with the mourning willow's careful gray,
Where rev'rend Cam cuts out his famous way,
The melancholy Cowley lay;
And, lo! a Muse appear'd to his clos'd sight,
(The Muses oft in lands of vision play)
Body'd, array'd, and seen by an internal light:
A golden harp with silver strings she bore,
A wondrous hieroglyphic robe she wore,
In which all colours and all figures were,
That Nature or that fancy can create,
That Art can never imitate,
And with loose pride it wanton'd in the air,
In such a dress, in such a well-cloth'd dream,
She us'd of old near fair Ismenus' stream,
Pindar, her Theban favourite to meet;
Thou, changeling! thou, bewitch'd with noise
and show,
Would'st into courts and cities from me go;
Would'st see the world abroad, and have a share
In all the follies and the tumults there:
Thou would'st, forsooth, be something in a state,
And business thou would'st find, and would'st
create;
Business! the frivolous pretence
Of human lusts, to shake off innocence;
Business! the grave impertinence!
Business! the thing which I of all things hate;
Business! the contradiction of thy fate.
"Go, renegado! cast up thy account
And see to what amount
Thy foolish gains by quitting me:
The sale of knowledge, fame, and liberty,
The fruits of thy unlearn'd apostacy.
Thou thought'st, if once the public storm were
A crown was on her head, and wings were on All thy remaining life should sunshine be;
She touch'd him with her harp, and rais'd him
from the ground,
The shaken strings melodiously resound.
"Art thou return'd at last," said she,
"To this forsaken place and me?
Thou prodigal! who didst so loosely waste
Of all thy youthful years the good estate;
Art thou return'd here, to repent too late,
And gather husks of learning up at last,
Now the rich harvest-time of life is past,
And winter marches on so fast?
But when I meant t' adopt thee for my son,
And did as learn'd a portion assign
As ever any of the mighty Nine
Had to their dearest children done;
When I resolv'd t' exalt thy anointed name,
Among the spiritual lords of peaceful fame;
Behold! the public storm spent at last,
The Sovereign's tost at sea no more,
And thou, with all the noble company,
Art got at last on shore.
But, whilst thy fellow-voyagers I see
All march'd up to possess the promis'd land,
Thou, still alone, alas! dost gaping stand
Upon the naked beach, upon the barren sand!
"As a fair morning of the blessed spring,
After a tedious stormy night,
Such was the glorious entry of our king;
Enriching moisture dropp'd on every thing:
Plenty he sow'd below, and cast about him light!
But then, alas! to thee alone
One of old Gideon's miracles was shown;
For every tree and every herb around
With pearly dew was crown'd,
And upon all the quicken'd ground
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