Had in him those brave translunary things
That the first poets had.

Drayton praises a figure (likely a poet) as possessing “brave translunary things”—qualities beyond the moon, i.e., superlative, otherworldly, and elevated above ordinary human reach. The phrase suggests imaginative daring and a kind of primordial poetic power: the “first poets” are invoked as archetypes of original inspiration, when poetry was thought to be closer to prophecy, myth-making, and cosmic vision. In two compact lines, the compliment fuses Renaissance cosmology (the moon as a boundary between the mutable earthly realm and the higher heavens) with a theory of poetic greatness: true poets recover a lost, early magnificence of mind and language.