English Odes Author:Edmund Gosse Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: chorus of the euphuists, — for what was Shakespeare himself but the greatest of all possible euphuists ?—fell naturally into rigid Latin forms. Where his strenuo... more »us genius had proceeded, though somewhat stiffly, proved too dense a medium for the steps of his disciples. The odes of Herrick and his compeers lack shape and grace; they move with a series of painful jerks, and cannot be profitably revived in such a collection as the present. It would be gratifying, for instance, to reprint an ode like the Mtidreiados of Quarles, if only to rescue from oblivion such a strophe as this :— O but this light is out! what waheful eye E'er marhed the progress of the Queen of Light, Robed with full glory in her austrian shy Until at length, in her young noon of night, A swart, tempestuous cloud doth rise and rise, A nd hides her lustre from our darhened sight: Even so too early Death, that has no ears Open to suits, in her scarce noon of years, Dashed out her light and left the tempest of our tears. But the poet cannot be trusted : we glance across the page and find :— Ladies, let not your emulous stomachs swell To hear perfection crowned. The only ode by a " son " of Ben Jonson which preserves throughout a Latin dignity of style, is that by Randolph to Sir Anthony Strafford. The style of Milton, no less than his soul, was " like a star and dwelt apart." His unrivalled odes were likethose octaves, of which aurists tell us, which exist indeed, but are wound too high to stir the auditory nerve. They had no influence whatever till Gray appeared, their full influence was not exercised until Shelley began to write. The ear of the sixteenth century, too dull to catch the harmonies of Milton, was profoundly moved by the coarser tones of Cowley ; and this remarkable poe...« less