Samuel Daniel (1562-1619). An Ode. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

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William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

An Ode

By Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)


NOW 1 each creature joys the other,
Passing happy days and hours;
One bird reports 2 unto another
In the fall of silver showers;
Whilst the Earth, our common mother,	5
Hath her bosom decked with flowers.

Whilst the greatest torch of heaven
With bright rays warms Flora’s lap,
Making nights and days both even,
Cheering plants with fresher sap;	10
My field of flowers quite bereaven, 3
Wants refresh of better hap.

Echo, daughter of the air,
Babbling guests of rocks and hills,
Knows the name of my fierce fair,	15
And sounds the accents of my ills.
Each thing pities my despair,
Whilst that she her lover kills.

Whilst that she—O cruel maid!—
Doth me and my true love despise,	20
My life’s flourish is decayed,
That depended on her eyes:
But her will must be obeyed,—
And well he ends, for love who dies.

Note 1. Printed in the first authorized ed. of Delia, 1592. I quote Prof. Schelling’s comment (Book of Elizabethan Lyrics, p. 235), from his note to this Ode: “Lowell instances ‘well-languaged Daniel,’ as he was called by William Browne, to show ‘that the artistic value of choice and noble diction was quite as well understood in his day as in ours.’ He adds of Daniel: “His poetic style is mainly as modern as that of Tennyson.’ Shakespeare Once More, Prose Works, III., ii., and ibid., IV., 280.” [back]

Note 2. One bird reports: “Samuel Daniel … has beautifully applied the word report—which was a technical term to denote this answering and echoing of voices in a madrigal—to the piping of birds in the woods.” (Sidney Lanier, Shakespeare and His Forerunners, vol. II., p. 45.) [back]

Note 3. Bereaven: taken away by violence, a by-form of bereaved formed on the analogy of strong verbs. (Schelling.) [back]

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