The Hymn to St. Teresa
has the brevities which this poet--reproached with his longueurs--
masters so well. He tells how the Spanish girl, six years old, set
out in search of death: "She's for the Moors and Martyrdom.
Sweet, not so fast!" Of many contemporary songs in pursuit of a
fugitive Cupid, Crashaw's Cupid's Cryer: out of the Greek, is the
most dainty. But if readers should be a little vexed with the
poet's light heart and perpetual pleasure, with the late ripeness
of his sweetness, here, for their satisfaction, is a passage
capable of the great age that had lately closed when Crashaw wrote.
It is in his summons to nature and art:
"Come, and come strong,
To the conspiracy of our spacious song!"
I have been obliged to take courage to alter the reading of the
seventeenth and nineteenth lines of the Prayer-Book, so as to make
them intelligible; they had been obviously misprinted. I have also
found it necessary to re-punctuate generally.
WISHES TO HIS SUPPOSED MISTRESS
This beautiful and famous poem has its stanzas so carelessly thrown
together that editors have allowed themselves a certain freedom
with it. I have done the least I could, by separating two stanzas
that repeated the rhyme, and by suppressing one that grew tedious.
ON THE DEATH OF MR. CRASHAW
This ode has been chosen as more nobly representative than that,
better known, On the Death of Mr.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44