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Ut hoy!

For in his pipe he made so much joy.

"Now farewell, mine own herdsman Wat !"
"Yes, 'fore God, Lady, so am I hat.1
Lull Jesus well in thy lap,

And farewell Joseph with Thy round cap.

Ut hoy!"

For in his pipe he made so much joy.

Now may I well both hop and sing,
For I have been at Christ's bearing,
Home to my fellows now will I fling.
Christ of Heaven, to His bliss us bring !

Ut hoy!

For in his pipe he made so much joy.

All these poems are English right through. After them a difference creeps in. In the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII England began to play her part in Europe; she was on the way to become a great Western power, and so was brought more and more into contact with the rest. Specially was she influenced in the sixteenth century by Italy and France. Not only Henry VIII and Francis I met on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but Englishmen began to mix with men of other nations in the Paradise fields of Poetry. Though love of England and of the homeland never dies, perhaps we never again find a lyric carolling of high things quite so debonairly as this shepherd, who though he talked of Bethlehem was native of the English Downs.

1 Called.

As we pass on to the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, the lyrics are so abundant and so beautiful that no more than a scantiest gleaning can be packed into this book. A few love-songs, which surely cannot be surpassed by any others, shall come first.

John Lyly may be unread nowadays, so far as his prose goes, but his sparkling little song, Cards and Kisseshalf jest, half earnest is not yet forgotten:

Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses-Cupid paid !

He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too: then down he throws
The coral of his lips, the rose

Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how);
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin:
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last, he set her both his eyes-
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.

O Love! has she done this for thee?
What shall, alas, become of me?

Since Elizabeth's reign was one of great activity, of fresh enterprises in all sorts of directions, it is natural that our literature should, as it did, show to what heights it could rise.

One of the earliest Elizabethan dramatists, who died so young, left behind him this love-lyric, simple and yet very hard to rival:

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers from the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love!

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing,
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move
Then live with me and be my Love.

The Passionate Shepherd was not the only lover whom Marlowe knew. In his tragedy, Dr. Faustus, a scholar who had sold his soul for knowledge, there is to be found one of the finest lyrical passages of love in English. By magic means, a vision had been brought before Faustus of that Helen of Troy, wife of Menelaus, King of Sparta, who was the most beautiful woman of her time. Having been persuaded by Paris, son of the King of Troy, to desert Menelaus for him, she became the cause of the Trojan War.

As this vision of her appeared in the German scholar's study, he burst out, in Marlowe's play, into this song of wonder and admiration:

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul, see where it flies !-
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for Heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sacked:
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumèd crest:
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.

Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.1

Then we turn to Shakespeare, and he brings us down from these giddy heights to the clean open country, for his plays are strewn with little jewels of song: When that I was and a little tiny boy; Where the bee sucks; Lawn as white as driven snow; Faery King, attend and mark; and all the rest. Who can say which of them all is the best? At any rate this is among the best:

When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh, the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,
With heigh, the sweet birds, O, how they sing!
Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;
For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.

The lark, that tirra-lyra chants,

With heigh, with heigh, the thrush, and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay.

So sang that snapper-up of unconsidered trifles," Autolycus, as he surely only irrelevantly remembered his aunts because he was hard pressed for a rime.

The most lyrical stanza from The Passionate Pilgrim, full as it is of Shakespeare's bitter-sweet wisdom, must not be forgotten:

1 The quotation is from Marlowe's plays, in the Mermaid Series.

Crabbèd age and youth cannot live together;
Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather,
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short;
Youth is nimble, age is lame;

Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;
Youth is wild and age is tame.

Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I do adore thee;
O, my love, my love is young!

Age, I do defy thee: O sweet shepherd, hie thee
For methinks thou stayst too long.

Then Ben Jonson was not only a playwright, but a lyrist too. Rarely has the goddess of the chase been more worthily sung than in his song, To Diana :

Queen and Huntress, chaste and fair
Now the sun is laid to sleep,

Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear when day did close:
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

Lay thy bow of pearl apart

And thy crystal-shining quiver;
Give unto the flying hart

Space to breathe, how short soever:
Thou that mak'st a day of night,
Goddess excellently bright.

Love did not always run smoothly, however, even in the great Elizabethan days. This seems to have been the case with the nameless man who, somewhere about the year 1580, left behind him this song for his disdainful lady:

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you so long,
Delighting in your company.

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