we are tickled with his wit, if we have not neard the thing too often. To be moved by the simple and beautiful expression of an emotion which we are fain to repeat again and again because of the pleasure it gives us, is to be moved as poetry can move. To witness the pyrotechnics of the most consummate wit and ingenuity once is enough; the fuse and powder are consumed, and nothing but the dead design, sullied with smoke, is left. What is worse, we have not always the pyrotechnics of wit, but too commonly, in the lyric of this age, a false product written with the rhetorician's condescension to what he feels an inferior species of literature, a condescension like to nothing but the contemporary attitude towards the inferior capacity and understanding of "females," with its mingled air of flattery and gallantry, itself an affront. Thus after a sojourn with the Elizabethan and seventeenth-century lyrists it becomes difficult to support the insipidity of this later literature of Chloe, Celia, and Dorinda, unless it be seasoned with the salt of cynicism, and then the product turns out to be something else, a something, whatever its merit, forever untranslatable into the terms of true poetry.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LYRICS.

BEN JONSON, Pan's Anniversary,

1631; acted before 1625.

THE SHEPHERDS' HOLIDAY.

THUS, thus begin the yearly rites

Are due to Pan on these bright nights;
His morn now riseth and invites

To sports, to dances, and delights:

All envious and profane, away,
This is the shepherds' holiday.

Strew, strew the glad and smiling ground
With every flower, yet not confound;
The primrose-drop, the spring's own spouse,
Bright day's-eyes and the lips of cows,
The garden-star, the queen of May,
The rose, to crown the holiday.

Drop, drop, you violets; change your hues,
Now red, now pale, as lovers use;

And in your death go out as well

As when you lived unto the smell,
That from your odor all may say,
This is the shepherds' holiday.

I

5

ΙΟ

15

HYMN

ΤΟ ΡΑΝ.

OF Pan we sing, the best of singers, Pan,

That taught us swains how first to tune our lays, And on the pipe more airs than Phœbus can.

Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his praise.

Of Pan we sing, the best of leaders, Pan,

That leads the Naiads and the Dryads forth; And to their dances more than Hermes can.

Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his worth.

Of Pan we sing, the best of hunters, Pan,

That drives the hart to seek unused ways, And in the chase more than Silvanus can.

Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his praise.

Of Pan we sing, the best of shepherds, Pan,

That keeps our flocks and us, and both leads forth
To better pastures than great Pales can.

Hear, O you groves, and hills resound his worth;
And, while his powers and praises thus we sing,
The valleys let rebound and all the rivers ring.

5

ΙΟ

15

THOMAS DEKKER, The Sun's Darling, 1656; written before 1625.

COUNTRY GLEE.

HAYMAKERS, rakers, reapers, and mowers,

Wait on your summer-queen ;

Dress up with musk-rose her eglantine bowers,
Daffodils strew the green;

Sing, dance, and play,

'Tis holiday;

The sun does bravely shine

On our ears of corn.

Rich as a pearl

Comes every girl:

This is mine! this is mine! this is mine!

Let us die, ere away they be borne.

Bow to the sun, to our queen, and that fair one
Come to behold our sports :

Each bonny lass here is counted a rare one,

As those in princes' courts.

These and we

With country glee,

Will teach the woods to resound,

And the hills with echo's holloa:
Skipping lambs

Their bleating dams,

'Mongst kids shall trip it round;

5

IO

15

20

For joy thus our wenches we follow.

Wind, jolly huntsmen, your neat bugles shrilly,

25

Hounds make a lusty cry;

Spring up, you falconers, the partridges freely,

Then let your brave hawks fly.

Now the deer falls; hark, how they ring!