A Description of the Spring

And now all nature seemed in love;
The lusty sap began to move;

New juice did stir the embracing vines,
And birds had drawn their valentines;
The jealous trout that now did lie,
Rose at a well-dissembled fly:

There stood my friend with patient skill,
Attending of his trembling quill.
Already were the eaves possessed
With the swift pilgrim's daubed nest:
The groves already did rejoice
In Philomel's triumphing voice.

The showers were short, the weather mild,
The morning fresh, the evening smiled.
Joan takes her neat-rubbed pail and now
She trips to milk the sand-red cow;
Where, for some sturdy football swain,
Joan strokes a sillabub or twain.
The fields and gardens were beset
With tulip, crocus, violet;

And now, though late, the modest rose
Did more than half a blush disclose.
Thus all looked gay, all full of cheer,
To welcome the new-liveried year.

the Queen of Bohemia

You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes

More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies;

What are you when the moon shall rise?

You curious chanters of the wood,
That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents; what's your praise,
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known
Like the proud virgins of the year
As if the spring were all your own;
What are you when the rose is blown?

So when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen,
Tell me if she were not designed
The eclipse and glory of her kind?

Content

Barnabe Barnes

Ah, sweet Content, where is thy mild abode? Is it with shepherds, and light-hearted swains,

Which sing upon the downs, and pipe abroad,

Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains?

Ah, sweet Content, where dost thou safely rest?

In heaven, with angels? which the praises

sing

Of Him that made, and rules at His behest,

The minds and hearts of every living thing. Ah, sweet Content, where doth thine harbour hold?

Is it in churches, with religious men, Which please the gods with prayers manifold,

And in their studies meditate it then?

Whether thou dost in heaven or earth

appear,

Be where thou wilt: thou wilt not harbour here.

NOTES

In making this anthology of sixteenth-century poetry I have proceeded, first, as if no other anthology had ever been made, and I have read through the entire poetical literature of the period, so far as it was accessible to me, and so far as it came within the scope of a selection of separate poems; with the single exception, that I have relied on Mr. Bullen's wide knowledge and exquisite judgment in the case of the Elizabethan song-books, and have made my own choice from his final edition of his Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age. Campion I have read independently, but also in his edition; and it is by his kind permission that I have printed from these and other texts of his. After I had finished this course of reading, I consulted the anthologies of English verse which I knew: The Golden Treasury, Mr. Beeching's Paradise of English Poetry, Mr. Quiller Couch's Golden Pomp, Mr. Arber's British Anthologies and English Garner, Mr. Linton's Rare Poems. The only two poems that I can remember to have come upon for the first time in any of these anthologies are the lines of Howell, which I found in The Golden Pomp, and the full text of Verstegen's "Our Blessed Lady's Lullaby", which I found in Mr. Arber's Shakespeare Anthology. I have done my best to give an accurate text of all the poems which I have reprinted; always following the best edition known to me, and in as many cases as possible collating such texts with the original editions. I have thus been able to correct a considerable number of erroneous readings, which we find repeated in edition after edition. For one correction I am indebted to Mr. Bullen: the reading of "ripe" for "rich" in the

(B 325)

465

2 H