 | The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley |  |
ON A PORTRAIT OF SIR JOHN SUCKLING
[This is by Marshall, and is prefixed to the earlier editions of the Fragmenta Aurea 1646, 1648, 1658. The poet is represented as surrounded by a great wreath of evergreens, which encircles the whole frontispiece. Above the wreath is written—Obiit anno (then comes a blank) ætatis 28.]
Rusting in earth. The world has gone its way
Careless that Death has mown thy golden youth.
Soldiers have fought and died and known not thee.
Maidens have loved, who never heard thy name.
And thou, whom Muses crowned with every gift,
While yet a boy—tho' in achievement man
Art snatched away; while this grim raven, Death,
Feeds on the light and glory of the world.
Heroic heart, long silent in the dust;
Where is the warrior's tomb, what grey church tower
Is honoured by thy rest? Art thou inurned
In some dim Norfolk village, whence thy race
Came of a kindly stock who fed their beeves
And grew their grain? Hast thou an effigy
Armoured in stone, with angels at the base
In alabaster sorrow; as the mode
Ran of sepulchral grief? And overhead
Thy gauntlet and thy banner and thy helm
Nailed to the chancel wall, and covered quite
With cobwebs. While thy wasted banner droops
As if the spiders wove its ragged sides.
And this thy hatchment, azure once and gules,
And three stags golden, emblems of thy race,
Effaced and tarnished, half the tinctures gone.
Oblivion and a hecatomb of dust
Invade the silent precincts of thy rest,
And thro' the lancet window I can hear
The voices of the village, forge and mart,
Harrow and spade, the mill-wheel and the plough.
While in the coppice sole, one nightingale
Sings me reminders of a note as sweet
And tender as her own; and while she sings
Thou art not quite forgot, my soldier bard,
Here in the pastoral village of thy youth.
We cannot see with eyes as clear as thine.
A sordid time dwarfs down the race of men.
They may not touch the lute or draw the sword
As thou didst, half immortal. So we hang
A wreath of homage on our captain's urn.
The elms are shining in the sun: the roofs
Melt with the mighty rain. The uprolled cloud
Soars in its majesty away through heaven.
The morning breaks in red and lustre. Earth
Is glad because of her. But we bewail
The young glad light of our Apollo gone,
Thy laurel, and thy lyre with broken chords,
And snapt below the hilt, thy gallant sword.
In that old spring among the old-world flowers?
Where are her fairy footsteps, where are gone
Aglaura's graceful curls? The tender rose
That lay against her cavalier's soft kiss:
The lordly, the invincible, the king
Of every Muse. Surely, that giant wreath,
Stamped on the opening page of thy renown,
Made out of all the woods, that leaf shedding
Of rathe Castalia's orchards, that green round
Shall wrap thee in with honour, dear and dead,
True gentleman, great type of ages gone,
To shallow natures in the days of smoke:
Radiant Apollo, warrior, Englishman,
To whom the cannon calling or the lute
Came with an equal voice: colleague of gods,
Such as the puny mothers of the world
No longer nourish on degenerate breasts,
The giants of the dawn, that never more
Shall come again. Old England, hear me say,
This man has lain in dust two hundred years,
Hast thou another such, my country, peer
To the great gone-away?
Some uncertainty attaches to most of the leading events of Sir John Suckling's career. To begin with, the exact year of his death is not known, but it is certain that he was already dead in 1641. In the first edition of his works, issued in 1646, the date of his decease is left in blank on the frontispiece portrait, but his age is there stated as twenty-eight. We now know, that he must have been several years older—that is, probably thirty-four.
The circumstances which attended his death are also shrouded in mystery. He died abroad, with some suspicion of suicide, probably in Paris, and he was doubtless buried in one of the neighbouring cemeteries. It is only right to explain, that the sketch at p. 278, of a tomb in some village near Wooton, is not founded on any historical evidence.
I have called Suckling's mistress Aglaura, as under this assumed name he addresses her in some of his letters. The same lady furnished the original for the heroine Aglaura in his best-known play.
To some, the eulogistic tone of my poem may seem excessive, having regard to certain scandals in Suckling's earlier career. These have reached us all more or less distorted by party prejudice. Suckling was the type and embodiment of the Cavalier to the Puritans; and thus he became a kind of literary scapegoat for his friends' failings as well as for his own. My verses, however, are a kind of epitaphium, in which species of composition it is always allowable to take the most favourable view.
| The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley | |