The Golden Pomp: A Procession of English Lyrics from Surrey to Shirley

'Twas but a bud, yet did contain
More sweetness than shall spring again;
A budding Star, that might have grown
Into a sun when it had blown.

This hopeful Beauty did create
New life in Love's declining state;

But now his empire ends, and we

From fire and wounding darts are free;
His brand, his bow, let no man fear;
The flames, the arrows, all lie here.

With this and the following epitaphs compare Beaumont's
"'Tis not a life;

'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away.'

CCCXXX

Page 295-'Here a pretty baby lies.' I cannot forbear from adding here in the notes another of Herrick's epitaphs upon children:

UPON A CHILD

'But born, and like a short delight,

I glided by my parents' sight.
That done, the harder fates denied
My longer stay, and so I died.

If, pitying my sad parents' tears,

You'll spill a tear or two with theirs,

And with some flowers my grave bestrew,

Love and they'll thank you for 't, Adieu.'

CCCXXXI

Page 296-'As I in hoary winter's night.' Ben Jonson (it is worth remarking) told Drummond of Hawthornden that he had been content to destroy many of his own writings to have written 'The Burning Babe.'

CCCXXXII

Page 299-'I sing the birth was born to-night.' With stanza 2, lines 4-6, compare Giles Fletcher's lines

'A Child He was, and had not learn'd to speak
That with His word the world before did make;
His mother's arms Him bore, He was so weak
That with one hand the vaults of heav'n could shake
See, how small room my infant Lord doth take,
Whom all the world is not enough to hold!
Who of His years, or of His age hath told?
Never such age so young, never a child so old.'

CCCXXXVIII

Page 304-Yet if His Majesty, our sovereign lord.' From Mr. Bullen's More Lyrics from the Elizabethan Song-books. Mr.

Bullen discovered this fine poem-a fragment, apparently, but flawless in itself-among a collection of early MS. music in the library of Christ Church, Oxford (where he also found that 'odd little snatch,' printed as No. XXI.). He writes, 'The detailed description of the preparations made by a loyal subject for the coming of his "earthly king" is singularly impressive. Few could have dealt with common household objects-tables and chairs and candles and the rest-in so dignified a spirit.'

CCCXLI

Page 306-'Now winter nights enlarge. From Campion's Third Book of Airs, circ. 1617.

CCCXLIII

Page 308-Let not the sluggish sleep. From William Byrd's Psalms, Songs, and Sonnets, 1611.

CCCXLV

Page 31-'Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore.' From Divine and Moral Songs, circ. 1613.

CCCLV

Page 320-'In the hour of my distress.' Barron Field, who reviewed Dr. Nott's edition of Herrick in the Quarterly, August 1810, gives an account of a visit he paid to Dean Prior in the summer of 1809, for the purpose of making some inquiries concerning the poet. He says, 'The person, however, who knows more of Herrick than all the rest of the neighbourhood, we found to be an old woman in the ninety-ninth year of her age, named Dorothy King. She repeated to us, with great exactness, five of his Noble Numbers, among which was the beautiful Litany... These she had learnt from her mother, who was apprenticed to Herrick's successor in the vicarage. She called them her prayers, which, she said, she was in the habit of putting up in bed, whenever she could not sleep and she therefore began the Litany at the second stanza

'When I lie within my bed,' etc.

Another of her midnight orisons was the poem beginning

'Every night thou dost me fright

And keep mine eyes from sleeping,' etc.

She had no idea that these poems had ever been printed, and could not have read them if she had seen them,'

CCCLIX, CCCLX

Pages 324, 325-'Give me my scallop-shell of quiet.' 'Even such is Time, that takes in trust.' Of each of these poems it is asserted, probably upon inference, that Raleigh wrote them in the Tower on the night before his death. But, if Raleigh neither wrote them then nor at any time, that they should have been attributed to him as appropriate is evidence in favour of a character that has been judged so variously.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

A Rose as fair as ever saw the North
A sweet disorder in her dress
Absence, hear thou my protestation
Adieu, farewell earth's bliss.
Ah, were she pitiful as she is fair