As Master of the Queen’s Revels at the court of King James
I, Samuel Daniel was a prolific writer of court masques. He
stoutly defended English verse traditions against the
Classical model and achieved great purity of language in his
meticulously crafted poems. Delia is one of the better
Elizabethan sonnet sequences, a form that reached its peak in
Spenser’s Amoretti and the sonnets of Shakespeare. In
the second poem Daniel dramatizes a story from Homer’s Odyssey
in which the Sirens tempt Ulysses (Odysseus) to abandon his
quest for home and lead a life of ease.
Samuel Daniel
From Delia
When men shall find thy flower, thy glory pass,
And thou, with careful brow sitting alone,
Received hast this message from thy glass,
That tells thee truth, and says that all is gone,
Fresh shalt thou see in me the wounds thou madest,
Though spent thy flame, in me the heat remaining,
I that have loved thee thus before thou fadest,
My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waning.
The world shall find this miracle in me,
That fire can burn when all the matter’s spent;
Then what my faith hath been thyself shall see,
And that thou wast unkind thou mayst repent.
Thou mayst repent that thou hast scorned my tears,
When winter snows upon thy golden hairs...
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born,
Relieve my languish and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my cares, return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth;
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn
Without the torment of the night’s untruth.
Cease, dreams, th’ imagery of our day desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,
And never wake to feel the day’s disdain.
Let others sing of knights and paladins
In aged accents and untimely words,
Paint shadows in imaginary lines
Which well the reach of their high wits records;
But I must sing of thee and those fair eyes.
Authentic shall my verse in time to come,
When yet th’ unborn shall say, "Lo where she lies,
Whose beauty made him speak that else was dumb."
These are the arks, the trophies I erect,
That fortify thy name against old age;
And these thy sacred virtues must protect
Against the dark and time’s consuming rage.
Though th’ error of my youth they shall discover,
Suffice, they show I lived and was thy lover.
Ulysses and the Siren
Siren: Come, worthy Greek, Ulysses, come,
Possess these shores with me;
The winds and seas are troublesome,
And here we may be free.
Here may we sit and view their toil
That travail in the deep,
And joy the day in mirth the while,
And spend the night in sleep.
Ulysses: Fair nymph, if fame or honour were
To be attained with ease,
Then would I come and rest me there,
And leave such toils as these.
But here it dwells, and here must I
With danger seek it forth;
To spend the time luxuriously
Becomes not men of worth.
Siren: Ulysses, Oh be not deceived
With that unreal name;
This honour is a thing conceived,
And rests on others’ fame.
Begotten only to molest
Our peace, and to beguile
The best thing of our life, our rest,
And give us up to toil.
Ulysses: Delicious nymph, suppose there were
Nor honour nor report,
Yet manliness would scorn to wear
The time in idle sport.
For toil doth give a better touch,
To make us feel our joy;
And ease finds tediousness, as much
As labour yields annoy.
Siren: Then pleasure likewise seems the shore
Whereto tends all your toil,
Which you forgo to make it more,
And perish oft the while.
Who may disport them diversely,
Find never tedious day,
And ease may have variety
As well as action may.
Ulysses: But natures of the noblest frame
These toils and dangers please,
And they take comfort in the same
As much as you in ease,
And with the thoughts of actions past
Are recreated still;
When pleasure leaves a touch at last
To show that it was ill.
Siren: That doth opinion only cause
That’s out of custom bred,
Which makes us many other laws
Than ever nature did.
No widows wail for our delights,
Our sports are without blood;
The world, we see, by warlike wights
Receives more hurt than good.
Ulysses: But yet the state of things require
These motions of unrest,
And these great spirits of high desire
Seem born to turn them best,
To purge the mischiefs that increase
And all good order mar;
For oft we see a wicked peace
To be well changed for war.
Siren: Well, well, Ulysses, then I see
I shall not have thee here,
And therefore I will come to thee
And take my fortunes there.
I must be won that cannot win,
Yet lost were I not won;
For beauty hath created been
T’ undo, or be undone.
Source: http://www.penguin.com
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