This was the key
in which all previous poets had played upon the metre which Webster was
to put to so deeply different an use.
Walking in a valley greene,
Spred with Flora summer queene:
Where shee heaping all hir graces,
Niggard seem'd in other places:
Spring it was, and here did spring
All that nature forth can bring.
(_Tullies Loue_, p. 53, ed. 1589.)
Nights were short, and daies were long;
Blossoms on the Hauthorns hung:
Philomele (Night-Musiques King)
Tolde the comming of the spring.
(_Grosart's Barnfield_ [1876], p. 97.)
On a day (alack the day!)
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air.
(_Love's Labor's Lost_, act iv., sc. iii.)
And now let us hear Webster.
Hearke, now every thing is still,
The Scritch-Owle, and the whistler shrill,
Call upon our Dame, aloud,
And bid her quickly don her shrowd:
Much you had of Land and rent,
Your length in clay's now competent.
A long war disturb'd your minde,
Here your perfect peace is sign'd.
Of what is't, fooles make such vaine keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth, weeping:
Their life, a generall mist of error,
Their death, a hideous storme of terror.
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