The necessity of rhyme
often forced him to a platitude, as where he says,--
"My love was blind to your deluding art,
But blind men feel when stabbed so near the heart."[63]
But even in rhyme he not seldom justifies his claim to the title of
"glorious John." In the very play from which I have just quoted are these
verses in his best manner:--
"No, like his better Fortune I'll appear,
With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair,
Just flying forward from her rolling sphere."
His comparisons, as I have said, are almost always happy. This, from the
"Indian Emperor," is tenderly pathetic:--
"As callow birds,
Whose mother's killed in seeking of the prey,
Cry in their nest and think her long away,
And, at each leaf that stirs, each blast of wind,
Gape for the food which they must never find."
And this, of the anger with which the Maiden Queen, striving to hide her
jealousy, betrays her love, is vigorous:--
"Her rage was love, and its tempestuous flame,
Like lightning, showed the heaven from whence it came."
The following simile from the "Conquest of Grenada" is as well expressed
as it is apt in conception:--
"I scarcely understand my own intent;
But, silk-worm like, so long within have wrought,
That I am lost in my own web of thought.
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