hadst not always the disposing of when it was alive." At
midnight he entreated her to leave him. It must have been then, that,
with unshaken fortitude, Rawleigh sat down to compose those verses on
his death, which being short, the most appropriate may be repeated.

Even such is Time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!

He has added two other lines expressive of his trust in his
resurrection. Their authenticity is confirmed by the writer of the
present letter, as well as another writer, enclosing "half a dozen
verses, which Sir Walter made the night before his death, to take his
farewell of poetry, wherein he had been a scribbler even from his
youth." The enclosure is not now with the letter. Chamberlain, the
writer, was an intelligent man of the world, but not imbued with any
deep tincture of literature. On the same night Rawleigh wrote this
distich on the candle burning dimly:--

Cowards fear to die; but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.

At this solemn moment, before he lay down to rest, and at the instant of
parting from his lady, with all his domestic affections still warm, to
express his feelings in verse was with him a natural effusion, and one
to which he had long been used. It is peculiar in the fate of Rawleigh,
that having before suffered a long imprisonment with an expectation of a
public death, his mind had been accustomed to its contemplation, and had
often dwelt on the event which was now passing. The soul, in its sudden
departure, and its future state, is often the subject of his few poems;
that most original one of "The Farewell,"

Go, soul! the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand, &c.

is attributed to Rawleigh, though on uncertain evidence. But another,
entitled "The Pilgrimage," has this beautiful passage:--

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,
My staff of truth to walk upon,
My scrip of joy immortal diet;
My bottle of salvation;
My gown of glory, Hope's true gage,
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage--

Whilst my soul, like a quiet palmer,
Travelleth towards the land of Heaven--

Rawleigh's cheerfulness was so remarkable, and his fearlessness of death
so marked, that the Dean of Westminster, who attended him, at first
wondering at the hero, reprehended the ligh