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Whereof when he was wakened with the noyse, and saw the beast so small:

Whats this (quoth he) that gives so great a voyce,

that wakens men withall?

In angry wize he flies about,

and threatens all with corage stout.

To whom his mother closely smiling sayd, twixt earnest and twixt game:

See, thou thyselfe likewise art lyttle made,

if thou regard the same.

And yet thou suffrest neyther gods in sky,

nor men in earth to rest:

And when thou art disposed cruelly,
theyr sleep thou dost molest,
Then eyther change thy cruelty,
or give like leave unto the fly.
Nathelesse the cruell boy not so content,
would needs the fly pursue,
And in his hand with heedless hardiment,

him caught for to subdue.
But when on it he hasty hand did lay,
the Bee him stung therefore;
Now out alasse (he cryde) and welaway,

I wounded am full sore;

The fly that I so much did scorne,

hath hurt me with his little horne.

Unto his mother straight he weeping came, and of his grief complayned: Who could not choose but laugh at his fond game,

though sad to see him pained.

Think now (quod she) my sonne, how great the smart,

of those whom thou dost wound:

Full many thou hast pricked to the hart,

that pitty never found; Therefore henceforth some pitty take,

when thou dost spoil of lovers make.

She took him streight full pitiously lamenting, and wrapt him in her smock;

She wrapt him softly, all the while repenting,

that he the fly did mock.

She drest his wound and it embaulmed wel

with salve of soveraine might; And then she bath'd him in a dainty well, the well of deare delight. Who would not oft be stung as this, to be so bath'd in Venus bliss ?

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his former cruelty.

And since that time he wounded hath myselfe

with his sharp darte of love,

And now forgets the cruel careless elfe

his mother's hest to prove. So now I languish till he please

my pining anguish to appease.

The men of Elizabethan days were not men of one or a few ideas: this England was alive with thought and action which the lyrics reflect. An instance may be found in the grave and beautiful poem which the playwright George Peele addressed to Queen Elizabeth. He had been at the University; he had written tales as well as plays; but here he speaks of himself as a soldier and courtier:

His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd;
O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing !
His youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurn'd,
But spurn'd in vain; youth waneth by increasing:
Beauty, strength, youth are flowers but fading seen;
Duty, faith, love are roots, and ever green.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees;
And, lovers' sonnets turn'd to holy psalms,
A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,
And feed on prayers, which are Age his alms:
But though from court to cottage he depart,
His Saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

And when he saddest sits in homely cell,
He'll teach his swains this carol for a song, -
"Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,
Curst be the souls that think her any wrong."
Goddess, allow this aged man his right

To be your beadsman now that was your knight.

If, after the lapse of centuries, we no longer regard Queen Elizabeth either as a Goddess or a Saint, we may still have imagination enough to understand why her courtiers could so write. If it were an age of exaggeration, at any rate the fine poem Integer Vitæ sometimes allotted to Francis Bacon, but probably with more justice to Thomas Campion-shows the strong, sober moral sense which grew up amidst the variety and brilliant adventures of Elizabethan life. It is the consolatory song of a man whose life is whole, unstained :

The man of life upright

Whose guiltless heart is free
From all dishonest deeds,
Or thought of vanity;

The man whose silent days
In harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude,
Nor sorrow discontent;

That man needs neither towers
Nor armour for defence,
Nor secret vaults to fly
From thunder's violence:

He only can behold
With unaffrighted eyes
The horrors of the deep
And terror of the skies.

Thus scorning all the cares
That fate or fortune brings,
He makes the heaven his book,
His wisdom heavenly things;

Good thoughts his only friends,
His wealth a well-spent age,
The earth his sober inn
And quiet pilgrimage.

On a more spiritual note, Robert Southwell-the Jesuit priest, imprisoned, often racked, and finally, in 1595, executed by Queen Elizabeth's orders wrote this lyric, The Burning Babe, a poem on our Lord's birth, so beautiful that rare Ben Jonson declared that he would

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have destroyed many of his own poems had he, could he have, written this one:

As I in hoary winter's night

Stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised was I with sudden heat
Which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye

To view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe, all burning bright
Did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat,
Such floods of tears did shed

As though His floods should quench His flames,
Which with His tears were fed.
"Alas!" quoth He, " but newly born

In fiery hearts I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts

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Or feel My fire but I!

My faultless Breast the furnace is;
The fuel wounding thorns;

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke;
The ashes, shames and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on,

And Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought

Are men's defilèd souls:
For which as now on fire I am
To work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath

To wash them in My blood."
With this, He vanish'd out of sight

And swiftly shrunk away,
And swift I called unto mind
That it was Christmas Day.

In 1652, there appeared in " S. Victor's Street at the Golden Sun," in Paris, from the press of Peter Tarza, printer to the Archbishop of Paris, a collection of Sacred Poems, by an English exile, Richard Crashaw. He was driven out of his Fellowship, at Peterhouse, Cambridge, because he would not subscribe to the Puritans' Covenant. There is, in this slender volume, a Nativity Hymn of Shepherds, of whom, in its course, two sing this verse together:

We saw Thee in Thy balmy nest,

Young Dawn of our Eternal Day!
We saw Thine eyes break from their East,
And chase the trembling shades away.

We saw Thee and we blest the sight,
We saw Thee by Thine own sweet light.

Then one shepherd, aghast at this world's reception of the Holy Babe, sings alone:

Poor world (said I) what wilt thou do,
To entertain this starry Stranger ?

Is this the best thou canst bestow ?

A cold, and not too cleanly, manger ?
Contend the powers of Heaven and Earth,
To fit a bed for this huge birth ?

Then the full chorus of shepherds bursts into lyrical praise of the Divine Child:

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span !

Summer in Winter, Day in Night!

Heaven in Earth, and God in man!
Great Little One! whose all-embracing birth
Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.

Thus the Nativity Songs of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries show us that no religious strife, fierce punishment, nor hardship, nor any other injury, can crush out a man's faith, if he " holds on," as Beowulf, long ages before, would have him do.

The beginning of the English seventeenth century saw the making of the imperishable Translation of the Old and New Testaments which we still call the " Authorised Version" of the Bible, in English. Prose is its style, though of the many books which make it up, many, specially in the Old Testament, were in the Original poetical. Though we may call it all prose, there are many lyrical passages which have all the quality of true song. Of course, as all translations do, such passages owe their beauty of meaning to the originals; but in this case, English lyrical prose gorgeous, stately, pathetic or whatever else it may have been in Elizabethan days

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