In the choir of our singers we only ask: "Dost thou lift up thine heart ?" Southwell's song answers for him: "I lift it up unto the Lord." His chief poem is called _St.Peter's Complaint_.

It is of considerable length--a hundred and thirty-two stanzas.

It reminds us of the Countess of Pembroke's poem, but is far more articulate and far superior in versification.

Perhaps its chief fault is that the pauses are so measured with the lines as to make every line almost a sentence, the effect of which is a considerable degree of monotony.

Like all writers of the time, he is, of course, fond of antithesis, and abounds in conceits and fancies; whence he attributes a multitude of expressions to St.Peter of which never possibly could the substantial ideas have entered the Apostle's mind, or probably any other than Southwell's own.