Good Heaven how that brave lad shames me, singing here the hymns which his mother taught him, before the very muzzles of Spanish guns; instead of bewailing unmanly, as I have done, the love which he held, I doubt not, as dear as I did even my Rosalind. This is his welcome to the winter's storm; while I, who dream, forsooth, of heavenly inspiration, can but see therein an image of mine own cowardly despair.
'Thou barren ground, whom Winter's wrath has wasted.
Art made a mirror to behold my plight.'[1]
Pah! away with frosts, icicles, and tears, and sighs"
"And with hexameters and trimeters too, I hope," interrupted Raleigh: "and all the trickeries of self-pleasing sorrow."
"I will set my heart to higher work, than barking at the hand which chastens me."
"Wilt put the lad into the 'Fairy Queen,' then, by my side? He deserves as good a place there, believe me, as ever a Guyon, or even as Lord Gray your Arthegall. Let us hail him. Hallo! young chanticleer of Devon! Art not afraid of a chance shot, that thou crowest so lustily upon thine own mixen?"
"Cocks crow all night long at Christmas, Captain Raleigh, and so do I," said Amyas's cheerful voice; "but who's there with you?"
"A penitent pupil of yours—Mr. Secretary Spenser."
"Pupil of mine?" said Amyas. "I wish he'd teach me a little of his art; I could fill up my time here with making verses."
"And who would be your theme, fair sir?" said Spenser.
"No 'who' at all. I don't want to make sonnets to blue eyes, nor black either: but if I could put down some of the things I saw in the Spice Islands"
"Ah," said Raleigh, "he would beat you out of Parnassus, Mr. Secretary. Remember, you may write about Fairyland, but he has seen it."
"And so have others," said Spenser; "it is not so far off from any one of us. Wherever is love and loyalty, great purposes, and lofty souls, even though in a hovel or a mine, there is Fairyland."
"Then Fairyland should be here, friend: for you represent love, and Leigh loyalty; while, as for great purposes and lofty souls, who so fit to stand for them as I, being (unless my enemies and my conscience are liars both) as ambitious and as proud as Lucifer's own self?"
"Ah, Walter, Walter, why wilt always slander thyself thus?"
"Slander? Tut.—I do but give the world a fair challenge, and tell it, 'There—you know the worst of me: come on and try a fall, for either you or I must down.' Slander? Ask Leigh here, who has but known me a fortnight, whether I am not as vain as a peacock, as selfish as a fox, as imperious as a bona roba, and ready to make a cat's paw of him or any man, if there be a chest-
- ↑ "The Shepherd's Calendar."
