Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

THE SONGE OF HIS HONOURS, SONGE THE NIGHTE BEFORE HE DIED.

"O hevenly God! O Father dere!
Cast down thy tender eye
Upon a wretch, which prostrat here
Before thy throne * dothe lye.

"O poure thy pretious oile of grace
Into my wounded harte:

O let thy dropps of mercy swage
The rygor of my smarte.

"My simple sowle oppressed sore
With carefull clogge of synne,
In humble sorte submitts it self
Thy mercy for to winne.

"Graunt mercy then, O Saviour sweete,

To me, moste wofull thrall, Whose mornfull crie to Thee above

Dothe still for mercie call.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]

Forgetting heaven and heavenlie powers,
Where God and saints doth' dwell;

My lief had like to tread the stepps

That leadethe the way to hell.

"But now, my Lord, and loadstarre brighte,

I will no more do soe;

To thincke upon my former lief

My harte dothe weepe3 for woe.

"Sythe thus therefore with dolefull* plainte

I do thy mercye crave,

O Lord! for thy great mercies sake,

Let me thy mercie have.

"Alas! I sithe; alas! I sobe,

And, alas! I do repente

That ever my licentious will s

So wickedly was bente.

"Restore to lief the wretched sowle

That ells is like to die,

So shall my voice unto thy name
Sing praise eternallie.

"Now blessed be the Father firste,

And blessed be the Son,

And blessed be the Holy Ghoste
By whome all things weere don.

7 Do, MS. and printed copy.
Path, printed copy.

Leades, MS. and printed copy.

• My, printed copy.

3 Bleed, MS. Melt, printed copy.

♦ Careful, printed copy.

5 Lyfe, MS.

Are, MS. and printed copy.

"Blesse me, O blessed Trinitie!

With thy eternal grace,

That, after death, my sowle maie have

In heaven a dwellinge place. Amen."

The marginal variations are here given from the Sloan manuscript, compared with an edition of the Paradise of dainty Devises, printed in 1596, where the poem occurs without signature; but in the first edition of that miscellany, dated 1576, it bears the initials F. K.; and in the second edition of 1577 it is signatured F. Kindlemarshe. In the Sloan MS. it is entitled, "A godly and vertuous Song made by the honourable the Earle of Essexe, late deceassed, in ano. Dni. 1576; "which concurring with the Harleian title, is an appropriation of sufficient authority.]

JOANNA,

LADY LUMLEY,

DAUGHTER-IN-LAW of the lady Arundel before mentioned, translated from the original into Latin,

[And wife of John lord Lumley, who died on the 11th of April 1609, and leaving no issue, gave James the first an opportunity of gratifying prince Henry's love of books, and of making a noble addition to the royal library. That library, says Dr. Birch, which now contains both manuscript and printed books, owes many valuable ones of the former kind to king Edward the fourth, and of the latter to Henry the seventh; who, according to lord Bacon, was rather studious than learned. Henry the eighth, who was learned himself, and a patron of learned men, and who had for his librarian the great antiquary John Leland, received presents of the works of most of the writers of his age. Under the short reign of that welleducated prince, Edward the sixth, an accession was made to his library more considerable than that under the govern ment of the bigotted queen Mary. Her sister Elizabeth greatly augmented her library. King James the first enriched the Bodleian library at Oxford at the expense of his own; giving a warrant to sir Thomas Bodley, under the privy seal, for the choice of any books which that gentleman should like, in any of his houses or libraries; but his majesty very amply supplied the place of them by the purchase of lord Lumley's collection, which also contained that of Henry earl of Arundel, his father-in-law, who had lived in the reign of Henry the cighth, when upon the dissolution of the monasteries, he had great opportunities of collecting manuscripts. See Birch's Life

« ForrigeFortsæt »