Michael Drayton

Idea

In former times, such as had store of coin,
In wars at home or when for conquests bound,
For fear that some their treasure should purloin,
Gave it to keep to spirits within the ground;

spirits guarding treasure

Drayton's using a specific folklore belief: treasure spirits were bound by magic to guard buried wealth. The spirit can't leave, but also won't give it up—it's trapped in service.

And to attend it them as strongly tied
Till they returned. Home when they never came,
Such as by art to get the same have tried,
From the strong spirit by no means force the same.
Nearer men come, that further flies away,

the paradox of pursuit

Notice the reversal: the closer you get to grabbing the treasure, the further it retreats. This is the poem's central mechanism—desire creates distance, not closeness.

Striving to hold it strongly in the deep.

You as the spirit

The volta shifts the metaphor: you're not the treasure-seeker, you're the trapped spirit. Your beauty is the wealth being guarded, and you're the one holding it back from others.

Ev'n as this spirit, so you alone do play
With those rich beauties Heav'n gives you to keep;
Pity so left to th' coldness of your blood,

coldness, not cruelty

"Coldness of your blood" suggests emotional detachment, not malice. The problem isn't that you're mean—it's that you're withholding from indifference, which Drayton frames as worse.

Not to avail you nor do others good.
Source

Reading Notes

The Metaphor: Why Treasure and Spirits?

Drayton opens with a specific historical practice: wealthy people would supposedly bury treasure and bind spirits to guard it magically. This wasn't abstract—early modern England had a real folklore tradition of treasure-spirits, and people actually attempted rituals to extract buried wealth. By grounding his metaphor in this concrete belief, Drayton makes the poem's logic feel inevitable rather than invented.

The genius move is that the spirit-guardian creates a paradox: it's bound to protect the treasure, but that very binding makes the treasure unreachable. The closer someone gets, the more the spirit resists. This isn't about the spirit being evil—it's about the structure of the trap itself. The spirit can't help but push away what it's meant to guard.

The Turn: You Are the Spirit, Not the Seeker

The poem's real work happens in line 11: "Ev'n as this spirit, so you alone do play." Suddenly the addressee (likely a woman, given the "beauties" and Drayton's sonnet tradition) isn't the treasure—she's the trapped guardian. Her beauty is the wealth she's been given to keep, and she's unconsciously playing the spirit's role: pushing away anyone who tries to get close.

The final couplet reframes this as a moral problem. "Pity so left to th' coldness of your blood, / Not to avail you nor do others good." She's not being cruel; she's being cold—emotionally unavailable. And that coldness serves no one: not herself ("not to avail you") and not the person who desires her ("nor do others good"). The poem's argument is that by hoarding beauty through emotional distance, she's wasting it. The treasure only has value if it circulates.