POETRY AND IMAGINATION 



Begins the day with our Antipodes ! 

 And shall I die, and this unconquered ? 

 Lo, here, my sons, are all the golden mines, 

 Inestimable drugs and precious stones, 

 More worth than Asia and all the world beside ; 

 And from the Antarctic Pole eastward behold 

 As much more land, which never was descried, 

 Wherein are rocks of pearl that shine as bright 

 As all the lamps that beautify the sky ! 

 And shall I die, and this unconquered ? 

 Here, lovely boys ; what death forbids my life. 

 That let your lives command in spite of death.' 



Since the days of Ben Jonson it has been too much Serious 

 the habit of critics to cast ridicule or contempt upon J^^^^^ 

 ' the Tamerlanes and Tamer-Chams of the late age, which /aine.' 

 had nothing in them but scenical strutting and furious 

 vociferation to warrant them to the ignorant gaper.' 

 This last speech of Tamburlaine's, like some others that 

 are given to him, is high and serious; Hakluyt, who 

 knew the fascination of the map, and Gilbert, who gave 

 his life in the cause of empire, might say Amen to it. 



The sense of liberty and power, and of belief in the T^^ 

 capacity and destiny of man, which was quickened by the fj'^pj^ ^^ 

 new discoveries, distinguishes the literature of the Eliza- 

 bethan age from the great backward-looking periods of 

 romance. It is a literature of youth and hope, with none of 

 the subtle and poignant flavours that are to be tasted in a 

 literature of regret and memory. If Marlowe may in 

 some regards be fitly compared with Shelley, there is 

 no counterpart in Elizabethan literature to the melan- 

 choly of Keats. Many old stories, it is true, were 

 borrowed ; mediaeval and classical fables were ransacked 

 for themes. But Spenser's chivalry is a convention, 

 and no true revival ; he portrays his own age, and his 



own contemporaries, as they appeared to him ; he too 



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