Delia II

By Samuel Daniel 1562–1619 Samuel Daniel

Go wailing verse, the infants of my love,

Minerva-like, brought forth without a Mother:

Present the image of the cares I prove,

Witness your Father’s grief exceeds all other.

Sigh out a story of her cruel deeds,

With interrupted accents of despair:

A monument that whosoever reads,

May justly praise, and blame my loveless Fair.

Say her disdain hath dried up my blood,

And starved you, in succours still denying:

Press to her eyes, importune me some good;

Waken her sleeping pity with your crying.

Knock at that hard heart, beg till you have moved her;

And tell th’unkind, how dearly I have loved her.

Biography

Though admired as a lyric poet and historian, Samuel Daniel has found few enthusiastic readers for his dramatic works. Sober minded, restrained, reflective, and frequently prosaic, Daniel stands outside the popular-stage tradition, yet as an innovator he is of considerable importance in the history of Renaissance drama. Cleopatra is one of the earliest and best attempts to transplant French Senecan closet drama to the English . . .

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