his death one of the most popular books in the country. His prose, as
prose, is not equal to his friend Raleigh's, being less condensed and
stately. It is too full of fancy in thought and freak in rhetoric to find
now-a-days more than a very limited number of readers; and a good deal of
the verse that is set in it, is obscure and uninteresting, partly from
some false notions of poetic composition which he and his friend Spenser
entertained when young; but there is often an exquisite art in his other
poems.

The first I shall transcribe is a sonnet, to which the Latin words
printed below it might be prefixed as a title: _Splendidis longum
valedico nugis._


A LONG FAREWELL TO GLITTERING TRIFLES.

Leave me, O love, which reachest but to dust;
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
What ever fades but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might
To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;
Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light
That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
Oh take fast hold; let that light be thy guide,
In this small course which birth draws out to death;
And think how evil[63] becometh him to slide
Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.
Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see:
Eternal love, maintain thy life in me.