e to,
Though they thy ways abhor,
That thou of force must do,
And thou canst do no more:
This reason would fulfil,
Their work should serve their will.

"Are we not heirs of death,
In whom there is no trust?
Who, toss'd with restless breath,
Are but a drachm of dust;
Yet fools whenas we err,
And heavens do wrath contract,
If they a space defer
Just vengeance to exact,
Pride in our bosom creeps,
And misinforms us thus
That love in pleasure sleeps
Or takes no care of us:
'The eye of Heaven beholds
What every heart enfolds.'"

Not a few of his other sonnets are also worth reading, and the unpromising
subject of _Doomsday_ (which connects itself in style partly with Spenser,
but perhaps still more with _The Mirror for Magistrates_), does not prevent
it from containing fine passages. Alexander had indeed more power of
sustained versification than his friend Drummond, though he hardly touches
the latter in point of the poetical merit of short isolated passages and
poems. Both bear perhaps a little too distinctly the complexion of
"_Gentlemen_ of the Press"--men who are composing poems because it is the
fashion, and because their education, leisure, and elegant tastes lead them
to prefer that form of occupation. But perhaps what is most interesting
about them is the way in which they reproduce on a smaller scale the
phenomenon presented by the Scotch poetical school of the fifteenth
century. That school, as is well known, was a direct offshoot from, or
following of the school of Chaucer, though in Dunbar at least it succeeded
in producing work almost, if not quite, original in form. In the same way,
Drummond and Alexander, while able to the full to experience directly the
foreign, and especially Italian influences which had been so strong on the
Elizabethans, were still in the main followers of the Elizabethans
themselves, and formed, as it were, a Scottish moon to the English sun of
poetry. There is little or nothing that is distinctively national about
them, though in their following of the English model they show talent at
least equal to all but the best of the school they followed. But this fact,
joined to those above noted, helps, no doubt, to give an air of want of
spontaneity to their verse--an air as of the literary exercise.

There are other writers who might indifferently come in this chapter or in
that on Caroline poetry, for the r