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Works of Michael Drayton


1612 Map of Virginia, John Smith and William Hole

Odes  (1619)            
 
TO  THE  VIRGINIAN  VOYAGE                     


You brave heroic minds,
Worthy your country's name,
     That honor still pursue,
     Go, and subdue,
Whilst loit'ring hinds
Lurk here at home, with shame.

Britons, you stay too long;
Quickly aboard bestow you,
     And with a merry gale
     Swell your stretched sail,
With vows as strong
As the winds that blow you.

Your course securely steer,
West and by south forth keep,
     Rocks, lee-shores, nor shoals,
     When Æolus scowls,
You need not fear,
So absolute the deep.

And cheerfully at sea,
Success you still entice,
     To get the pearl and gold,
     And ours to hold,
Virginia,
Earth's only paradise,

Where nature hath in store
Fowl, venison, and fish,
     And the fruitful'st soil
     Without your toil
Three harvests more,
All greater than your wish.

And the ambitious vine
Crowns with his purple mass,
     The cedar reaching high
     To kiss the sky,
The cypress, pine,
And useful sassafras.

To whose the golden age
Still nature's laws doth give,
     No other cares that tend,
     But them to defend
From winter's age,
That long there doth not live.

When as the luscious smell
Of that delicious land,
     Above the seas that flows,
     The clear wind throws,
Your hearts to swell
Approaching the dear strand,

In kenning of the shore,
Thanks to God first given,
     O you, the happi'st men,
     Be frolic then,
Let cannons roar,
Frighting the wide heaven.

And in regions far
Such heroes bring ye forth
     As those from whom we came,
     And plant our name
Under that star
Not known unto our north.

And as there plenty grows
Of laurel everywhere,
     Apollo's sacred tree,
     You it may see
A poet's brows
To crown, that may sing there.


Thy voyages attend,
Industrious Hakluÿt,
     Whose reading shall enflame
     Men to seek fame,
And much commend
To after times thy wit. 
 

 


Source:
Poetry of the English Renaissance 1509-1660.
J. William Hebel and Hoyt H. Hudson, Eds.
New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1941. 296-297.




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Persons of Interest
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Historical Events
Field of the Cloth of Gold, 1520
Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536
The Babington Plot, 1586
The Spanish Armada, 1588


Elizabethan Theatre
See section
English Renaissance Drama


Images of London:
London in the time of Henry VII. MS. Roy. 16 F. ii.
London, 1510, the earliest view in print
Map of England from Saxton's Descriptio Angliae, 1579
Location Map of Elizabethan London
Plan of the Bankside, Southwark, in Shakespeare's time
Detail of Norden's Map of the Bankside, 1593
Bull and Bear Baiting Rings from the Agas Map (1569-1590, pub. 1631)
Sketch of the Swan Theatre, c. 1596
Westminster in the Seventeenth Century, by Hollar
Visscher's Panoramic View of London, 1616. COLOR



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