Sidney’s and Greville’s careers were nearly parallel, though Greville attended Cambridge rather than Oxford. The two came to court at the same time, and both were favorites of Elizabeth. After Sidney’s death Greville became one of the wealthiest and most influential men in England; after Elizabeth’s death, he served James as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was knighted in 1603, and in 1621 he was made first Baron Brooke. He was a generous literary patron; among the recipients of his aid were Samuel Daniel and William Davenant.
As the earlier poets Wyatt and Surrey were once paired by conventional scholarship and criticism, and Surrey preferred to Wyatt, so have Greville and Sidney been paired, and Sidney preferred to Greville. In recent years, however, Greville has been read more and more; and as he is read more, the depth and power of his work is more widely recognized, and the significance of his career is more accurately understood. Though he stands at the beginning of the Petrarchan movement, he is the first poet in whom the conflict between the earlier Native practice and the later Petrarchan practice becomes very meaningful. He wrote two verse dramas that show the influence of the French Senecans, and five very long verse treatises, as well as the Life of Sidney; but his final worth must rest upon Caelica, a sequence of short poems that shows his growth from a fairly skilled but conventional Petrarchan to the major poet who must be ranked with Jonson and Donne.
TEXT:
Poems and Dramas of Fulke Greville, in 2 vols., edited by Geoffrey Bullough (1945).
7: The world, that all contains
The world, that all contains, is ever moving;
The stars within their spheres forever turned;
Nature, the queen of change, to change is loving;
And form to matter new is still adjourned.
Fortune, our fancy-God, to vary liketh;
Place is not bound to things within it placed;
The present time upon time passëd striketh;
With Phoebus’ wandering course the earth is graced.
The air still moves, and by its moving cleareth;
The fire up ascends, and planets feedeth;
The water passeth on, and all lets weareth;
The earth stands still, yet change of changes breedeth.
Her plants, which summer ripes, in winter fade;
Each creature in unconstant mother lieth;
Man made of earth, and for whom earth is made,
Still dying lives, and living ever dieth.
Only like fate sweet Myra never varies,
Yet in her eyes the doom of all change carries.
12: Cupid, thou naughty boy
Cupid, thou naughty boy, when thou wert loathëd,
Naked and blind, for vagabonding noted,
Thy nakedness I in my reason clothëd,
Mine eyes I gave thee, so was I devoted.
Fie, Wanton, fie! who would show children kindness?
No sooner he into mine eyes was gotten
But straight he clouds them with a seeing blindness,
Makes reason wish that reason were forgotten.
From thence to Myra’s eyes the Wanton strayeth,
Where, while I charge him with ungrateful measure,
So with fair wonders he mine eyes betrayeth,
That my wounds, and his wrongs, become my pleasure;
Till for more spite to Myra’s heart he flieth,
Where living to the world, to me he dieth.
16: Fie, foolish earth
Fie, foolish Earth, think you the heaven wants glory
Because your shadows do your self benight?
All’s dark unto the blind; let them be sorry;
The heavens in themselves are ever bright.
Fie, fond desire, think you that love wants glory
Because your shadows do your self benight?
The hopes and fears of lust may make men sorry,
But love still in her self finds her delight.
Then, Earth, stand fast; the sky that you benight
Will turn again, and so restore your glory;
Desire, be steady; hope is your delight,
An orb wherein no creature can be sorry,
Love being placed above these middle regions,
Where every passion wars itself with legions.
22: I, with whose colors
I, with whose colors Myra dressed her head;
I, that ware posies of her own hand-making;
I, that mine own name in the chimneys read,
By Myra finely wrought ere I was waking:
Must I look on, in hope time coming may
With change bring back my turn again to play?
I, that on Sunday at the church-stile found
A garland sweet, with true-love knots in flowers,
Which I to wear about mine arm was bound,
That each of us might know that all was ours:
Must I now lead an idle life in wishes,
And follow Cupid for his loaves and fishes?
I, that did wear the ring her mother left;
I, for whose love she gloried to be blamëd;
I, with whose eyes her eyes committed theft;
I, who did make her blush when I was namëd:
Must I lose ring, flowers, blush, theft and go naked,
Watching with sighs, till dead love be awakëd?
I, that when drowsy Argus fell asleep,
Like Jealousy o’erwatchëd with desire,
Was even warnëd modesty to keep,
While her breath, speaking, kindled Nature’s fire:
Must I look on a-cold, while others warm them?
Do Vulcan’s brothers in such fine nets arm them?
Was it for this that I might Myra see
Washing the water with her beauties, white?
Yet would she never write her love to me.
Thinks wit of change while thoughts are in delight?
Mad girls must safely love, as they may leave;
No man can print a kiss; lines may deceive.
29: Faction, that ever dwells
Faction, that ever dwells
In courts where wit excels,
Hath set defiance;
Fortune and Love have sworn
That they were never born
Of one alliance.
To be God of desire,
Swears he gives laws,—
That where his arrows hit,
Some joy, some sorrow it,
Fortune no cause.
Fortune swears weakest hearts,
The books of Cupid’s arts,
Turn with her wheel;
Senses themselves shall prove
Venture hath place in love;
Ask them that feel.
This discord, it begot
Atheists, that honor not
Nature, thought good;
Fortune should ever dwell
In courts, where wits excel;
Love keep the wood.
Thus to the wood went I
With Love to live and die;
Fortune’s forlorn.
Experience of my youth
Thus makes me think the truth
In desert born.
My saint is dear to me;
Myra herself is she,
She fair and true;
Myra that knows to move
Passions of love with love:
Fortune, Adieu.
38: Caelica, I overnight was finely used
Caelica, I overnight was finely used,
Lodged in the midst of paradise, your Heart;
Kind thoughts had charge I might not be refused;
Of every fruit and flower I had part.
But curious knowledge, blown with busy flame,
The sweetest fruits had down in shadows hidden;
And for it found mine eyes had seen the same,
I from my paradise was straight forbidden,—
Where that cur, Rumor, runs in every place,
Barking with care, begotten out of fear;
And glassy Honor, tender of Disgrace,
Stands Seraphin to see I come not there;
While that fine soil, which all these joys did yield,
By broken fence is proved a common field.
40: The nurse-life wheat
The nurse-life wheat, within his green husk growing,
Flatters our hope and tickles our desire,
Nature’s true riches in sweet beauties showing,
Which set all hearts with labor’s love on fire.
No less fair is the wheat when golden ear
Shows unto hope the joys of near enjoying;
Fair and sweet is the bud, more sweet and fair
The rose, which proves that time is not destroying.
Caelica, your youth, the morning of delight,
Enameled o’er with beauties white and red,
All sense and thoughts did to belief invite,
That love and glory there are brought to bed;
And your ripe years’ love-noon—he goes no higher—
Turns all the spirits of Man into desire.
Absence, the noble truce
Of Cupid’s war,
Where, though desires want use,
They honored are,
Thou art the just protection
Of prodigal affection;
Have thou the praise.
When bankrupt Cupid braveth,
Thy mines his credit saveth
With sweet delays.
Of wounds which presence makes
With Beauty’s shot,
Absence the anguish slakes,
But healeth not.
Absence records the stories
Wherein Desire glories,
Although she burn;
She cherisheth the spirits
Where Constancy inherits
And passions mourn.
Absence, like dainty clouds
On glorious-bright,
Nature’s weak senses shrouds
From harming light.
Absence maintains the treasure
Of pleasure unto pleasure,
Sparing with praise;
Absence doth nurse the fire,
Which starves and feeds desire
With sweet delays.
Of Beauty ties;
Where wonder rules the heart,
There pleasure dies.
Presence plagues mind and senses
With modesty’s defences;
Absence is free.
Thoughts do in absence venter
On Cupid’s shadowed center;
They wink and see.
But thoughts be not so brave
With absent joy;
For you with that you have
Your self destroy.
The absence which you glory
Is that which makes you sorry
And burn in vain;
For thought is not the weapon
Wherewith thoughts-ease men cheapen.
Absence is pain.
52: Away with these self-loving lads
Away with these self-loving lads,
Whom Cupid’s arrow never glads;
Away, poor souls that sigh and weep,
In love of those that lie asleep.
For Cupid is a meadow-God,
And forceth none to kiss the rod.
Sweet Cupid’s shafts, like destiny,
Do causeless good or ill decree;
Desert is born out of his bow,
Reward upon his wing doth go:
What fools are they that have not known
That Love likes no laws but his own.
My songs they be of Cynthia’s praise,
I wear her rings on holy days;
In every tree I write her name,
And every day I read the same.
Where Honor Cupid’s rival is,
There miracles are seen of his.
If Cynthia crave her ring of me,
I blot her name out of the tree;
If doubt do darken things held dear,
Then well fare nothing once a year:
For many run, but one must win;
Fools only hedge the cuckoo in.
The worth that worthiness should move
Is love, that is the bow of love;
And love as well thee foster can
As can the mighty nobleman.
Sweet saint, ’tis true, you worthy be,
Yet without Love nought worth to me.
56: All my senses, like beacon’s flame
All my senses, like beacon’s flame,
Gave alarum to desire
To take arms in Cynthia’s name
And set all my thoughts on fire.
Fury’s wit persuaded me
Happy love was hazard’s heir;
Cupid did best shoot and see
In the night where smooth is fair.
Up I start believing well
To see if Cynthia were awake;
Wonders I saw, who can tell?
And thus unto myself I spake:
“Sweet God Cupid, where am I,
That by pale Diana’s light
Such rich beauties do espy
As harm our senses with delight?
See where Jove and Venus shine,
Showing in her heavenly eyes
That desire is divine;
Look where lies the milken way,
Way unto that dainty throne,
Where, while all the Gods would play,
Vulcan thinks to dwell alone.”
I gave reins to this conceit,
Hope went on the wheel of lust;
Fancy’s scales are false of weight,
Thoughts take thought that go of trust.
I stepped forth to touch the sky,
I a God by Cupid dreams;
Cynthia, who did naked lie,
Runs away like silver streams,
Leaving hollow banks behind
Who can neither forward move,
Nor if rivers be unkind
Turn away or leave to love.
There stand I, like arctic pole,
Where Sol passeth o’er the line,
Mourning my benighted soul,
Which so loseth light divine.
There stand I like men that preach
From the execution place,
At their death content to teach
All the world with their disgrace.
He that lets his Cynthia lie
Naked on a bed of play
To say prayers ere she die,
Teacheth time to run away.
Let no love-desiring heart
In the stars go seek his fate:
Love is only Nature’s art;
Wonder hinders love and hate.
None can well behold with eyes
But what underneath him lies.
When all this All doth pass from age to age,
And revolution in a circle turn,
Then heavenly Justice doth appear like rage,
The caves do roar, the very seas do burn,
Glory grows dark, the sun becomes a night,
And makes this great world feel a greater might.
When Love doth change his seat from heart to heart,
And worth about the wheel of fortune goes,
Grace is diseased, desert seems overthwart,
Vows are forlorn, and truth doth credit lose,
Chance then gives law, desire must be wise
And look more ways than one, or lose her eyes.
My age of joy is past, of woe begun;
Absence my presence is, strangeness my grace;
With them that walk against me, is my sun;
The wheel is turned; I hold the lowest place.
What can be good to me, since my love is,
To do me harm, content to do amiss?
82: You that seek what life is in death
You that seek what life is in death,
Now find it air that once was breath:
New names unknown, old names gone,
Till time end bodies, but souls none.
Reader! then make time, while you be,
But steps to your eternity.
Farewell, sweet boy; complain not of my truth;
Thy mother loved thee not with more devotion;
For to thy boy’s play I gave all my youth;
Young master, I did hope for your promotion.
While some sought honors, princes’ thoughts observing,
Many wooed Fame, the child of pain and anguish;
Others judged inward good a chief deserving;
I in thy wanton visions joyed to languish.
I bowed not to thy image for succession,
Nor bound thy bow to shoot reformëd kindness;
Thy plays of hope and fear were my confession,
The spectacles to my life was thy blindness.
But, Cupid, now farewell; I will go play me
With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.
86: The earth with thunder torn
The earth with thunder torn, with fire blasted,
With waters drowned, with windy palsy shaken,
Cannot for this with heaven be distasted,
Since thunder, rain, and winds from earth are taken.
Man torn with love, with inward furies blasted,
Drowned with despair, with fleshly lustings shaken,
Cannot for this with heaven be distasted:
Love, fury, lustings out of man are taken.
Then, Man, endure thy self; those clouds will vanish;
Life is a top which whipping sorrow driveth;
Wisdom must bear what our flesh cannot banish;
The humble lead, the stubborn bootless striveth.
Or Man, forsake thy self, to heaven turn thee;
Her flames enlighten Nature, never burn thee.
Man, dream no more of curious mysteries,
As what was here before the world was made,
The first man’s life, the state of Paradise,
Where heaven is, or hell’s eternal shade:
For God’s works are like him, all infinite;
And curious search but crafty sin’s delight.
The flood that did, and dreadful fire that shall,
Drown and burn up the malice of the earth,
The divers tongues and Babylon’s down-fall
Are nothing to the man’s renewëd birth.
First, let the law plough up thy wicked heart,
That Christ may come, and all these types depart.
When thou hast swept the house that all is clear,
When thou the dust hast shaken from thy feet,
When God’s All-might doth in thy flesh appear,
Then seas with streams above thy sky do meet:
For goodness only doth God comprehend,
Knows what was first, and what shall be the end.
97: Eternal Truth, almighty, infinite
Eternal Truth, almighty, infinite,
Only exilëd from man’s fleshly heart
Where ignorance and disobedience fight,
In hell and sin, which shall have greatest part—
When thy sweet mercy opens forth the light
Of Grace which giveth eyes unto the blind,
And with the law even plowest up our sprite
To faith, wherein flesh may salvation find,
Thou bidst us pray; and we do pray to thee,
But as to power and God without us placed,
Thinking a wish may wear out vanity,
Or habits be by miracles defaced.
One thought to God we give, the rest to sin;
Quickly unbent is all desire of good;
True words pass out, but have no being within;
We pray to Christ, yet help to shed his blood.
For while we say, “Believe!” and feel it not,
Promise amends, and yet despair in it,
Hear Sodom judged, and go not out with Lot,
Make Law and Gospel riddles of the wit,—
We with the Jews even Christ still crucify,
As not yet come to our impiety.
98: Wrapped up, O Lord, in man’s degeneration
Wrapped up, O Lord, in man’s degeneration,
The glories of thy truth, thy joys eternal,
Reflect upon my soul dark desolation,
And ugly prospects o’er the spirits infernal.
Lord, I have sinned, and mine iniquity
Deserves this hell; yet, Lord, deliver me.
Thy power and mercy never comprehended
Rest lively imaged in my conscience wounded;
Mercy to grace, and power to fear extended,
Both infinite; and I in both confounded.
Lord, I have sinned, and mine iniquity
Deserves this hell; yet, Lord, deliver me.
If from this depth of sin, this hellish grave,
And fatal absence from my Saviour’s glory
I could implore His mercy, who can save,
And for my sins, not pains of sin, be sorry,—
Lord, from this horror of iniquity
And hellish grave, Thou wouldst deliver me.
99: Down in the depth of mine iniquity
Down in the depth of mine iniquity,
That ugly center of infernal spirits,
Where each sin feels her own deformity
In these peculiar torments she inherits—
Deprived of human graces and divine,
Even there appears this saving God of mine.
And in this fatal mirror of transgression,
Shows man as fruit of his degeneration,
The error’s ugly infinite impression,
Which bears the faithless down to desperation.
Deprived of human graces and divine,
Even there appears this saving God of mine.
In power and truth, almighty and eternal,
Which on the sin reflects strange desolation,
With glory scourging all the spirits infernal,
And uncreated hell with unprivation—
Deprived of human graces, not divine,
Even there appears this saving God of mine.
For on this spiritual cross condemnëd lying
To pains infernal by eternal doom,
I see my Saviour for the same sins dying,
And from that hell I feared, to free me, come.
Deprived of human graces, not divine,
Thus hath his death raised up this soul of mine.
100: In night, when colors all to black are cast
In night, when colors all to black are cast,
Distinction lost, or gone down with the light,
The eye, a watch to inward senses placed,
Not seeing, yet still having power of sight,
Gives vain alarums to the inward sense,
Where fear, stirred up with witty tyranny,
Confounds all powers, and through self-offence
Doth forge and raise impossibility,
Such as in thick depriving darknesses
Proper reflections of the error be,
And images of self-confusednesses,
Which hurt imaginations only see:—
And from this nothing seen, tells news of devils,
Which but expressions be of inward evils.
109: Sion lies waste
Sion lies waste, and thy Jerusalem,
O Lord, is fallen to utter desolation;
Against thy prophets and thy holy men
The sin hath wrought a fatal combination,
Profaned thy name, thy worship overthrown,
And made thee, living Lord, a God unknown.
Thy powerful laws, thy wonders of creation,
Thy Word incarnate, glorious heaven, dark hell,
Lie shadowed under Man’s degeneration,
Thy Christ still crucified for doing well;
Impiety, O Lord, sits on thy throne,
Which makes thee, living Light, a God unknown.
Man’s superstition hath thy truths entombed,
His atheism again her pomps defaceth;
That sensual unsatiable vast womb
Of thy seen church, thy unseen church disgraceth;
There lives no truth with them that seem thine own,
Which makes thee, living Lord, a God unknown.
Yet unto thee, Lord, (mirror of transgression)
We, who for earthly idols have forsaken
Thy heavenly Image (sinless, pure impression)
And so in nets of vanity lie taken,
All desolate, implore that to thine own,
Lord, thou no longer live a God unknown.
Yet, Lord, let Israel’s plagues not be eternal,
Nor sin forever cloud thy sacred mountains,
Nor with false flames, spiritual but infernal,
Dry up thy mercy’s ever-springing fountains;
Rather, sweet Jesus, fill up time, and come
To yield the sin her everlasting doom.
nurse-life: i.e., life-fostering.
venter: venture.