Can be, but our imaginations May make it ours? And here being thus together, We are one another's wife, ever begetting New births of love; we are father, friends, acquaintance; I am your heir, and you are mine; this place Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor Dare take this from us: here, with a little patience, We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us; PAL. You have made me I thank you, cousin Arcite !-almost wanton It is to live abroad, and everywhere! "Tis like a beast, methinks! I find the court here, I'm sure, a more content; and all those pleasures, I see through now; and am sufficient To tell the world, 'Tis but a gaudy shadow, The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite, ARC. I would hear you still. PAL. You shall. Is there record of any two that loved Better than we do, Arcite? ARC. Sure there cannot. PAL. I do not think it possible our friendship Should ever leave us. ARC. Till our deaths it cannot; And after death our spirits shall be led To those that love eternally. The Two Noble Kingmen, Act II. se. 1. Pastoral Love-From the Faithful Shepherdess.' CLORIN and a SATYR with basket of fruit. SATYR. Through yon same bending plain [Seeing CLORIN. Brightest fair, thou art divine, Deign it, goddess, from my hand Here be grapes whose lusty blood, Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown Than the squirrel whose teeth crack them; Deign, O fairest fair, to take them: For these, black-eyed Driope Hath oftentimes commanded me With my clasped knee to climb: See how well the lusty time Hath decked their rising cheeks in red, Here be berries for a queen, Some be red, some be green: These are of that luscious meat The great god Pan himself doth eat: All these, and what the woods can yield, The hanging mountain or the field, I freely offer, and ere long Will bring you more, more sweet and strong; Till when, humbly leave I take, Lest the great Pan do awake, That sleeping lies in a deep glade, Under a broad beech's shade. I must go, I must run, Swifter than the fiery sun. CLORIN. And all my fears go with thee. What greatness, or what private hidden power, Is there in me to draw submission From this rude man and beast?-sure I am mortal; The daughter of a shepherd; he was mortal, And she that bore me mortal; prick my hand And it will bleed; a fever shakes me, and The self-same wind that makes the young lambs shrink. Yet I have heard-my mother told it me And now I do believe it, if I keep My virgin flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, No goblin, wood-god, fairy, elf, or fiend, Satyr, or other power that haunts the groves, Draw me to wander after idle fires, Or voices calling me in dead of night Through mire and standing pools, to find my ruin. [Exit. Else why should this rough thing, who never knew That break their confines. Then, strong Chastity, PERIGOT and AMORET appoint to meet at the Virtuous Well. Equal with his soul's good. AMORET. Speak, I give Thee freedom, shepherd, and thy tongue be still The same it ever was, as free from ill As he whose conversation never knew The court or city: be thou ever true. PERI. When I fall off from my affection, The wolf, or winter's rage, summer's great heat, Of ill is yet unknown, fall speedily, And in their general ruin let me go. AMO. I pray thee, gentle shepherd, wish not so: I do believe thee, 'tis as hard for me To think thee false, and harder than for thee PERI. Oh, you are fairer far Than the chaste blushing morn, or that fair star That guides the wandering seamen through the deep, Your hair more beautious than those hanging locks AMO. Shepherd, be not lost, Y' are sailed too far already from the coast Of our discourse. PERI. Did you not tell me once I should not love alone, I should not lose Those many passions, vows, and holy oaths, I've sent to heaven? Did you not give your hand, You yourself vowed were mine. AMO. Shepherd, so far as maiden's modesty To meet this happy night in that fair grove, Where all true shepherds have rewarded been For their long service. Say, sweet, shall it hold? AMO. Dear friend, you must not blame me if I make, PERI. Oh, do not wrong my honest simple truth; As those chaste flames that burn before the shrine To draw you thither was to plight our troths, For to that holy wood is consecrate A Virtuous Well, about whose flowery banks By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn Fresh fountain many a blushing maid Hath crowned the head of her long-loved shepherd Act 1. sc. 2. The lyrical pieces scattered throughout Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are generally in the same graceful and fanciful style as the poetry of the Faithful Shepherdess.' Some are here subjoined: To Sleep.-From the same. In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud Song to Pan, at the Conclusion of the 'Faithful Shepherdess.' All ye woods, and trees, and bowers, All ye virtues and ye powers That inhabit in the lakes, In the pleasant springs or brakes, Move your feet To our sound, All this ground, With his honour and his name That defends our flocks from blame. He is great and he is just, He is ever good, and must Thus be honoured. Daffodilies, Roses, pinks, and loved lilies, Whilst we sing, Ever honoured, ever young ! Rollo. Hide, O hide those hills of snow, Which thy frozen bosom bears, Are yet of those that April wears; GEORGE CHAPMAN. GEORGE CHAPMAN, the translator of Homer, wrote early and copiously for the stage. His first play, the Blind Beggar of Alexandria,' was printed in 1598, the same year that witnessed Ben Jonson's first and masterly dramatic effort. Previous to this, Chapman had translated part of the Iliad;' and his lofty fourteen-syllable rhyme, with such lines as the following, would seem to have promised a great tragic poet: From his bright helm and shield did burn a most unwearied fire, The beauty of Chapman's compound Homeric epithets, as far-shooting Phoebus, the ever-living gods, the many-headed hill, silver-footed Thetis, the triple-feathered helm, the fair-haired boy, high-walled Thebes, the strong-winged lance, &c. bear the impress of a poetical imagination, chaste yet luxuriant. But however spirited and lofty as a translator, Chapman proved but a heavy and cumbrous dramatic writer. He continued to supply the theatre with tragedies and comedies up to 1620 or later; yet of the sixteen that have descended to us, not one possesses the creative and vivifying power of dramatic |