Sweetly dear, and dearly sweet; IT WHAT IS LOVE? T is too clear a brightness for man's eye; As gives the soul a secret power to know it, It is of heaven and earth the highest beauty, The Deity of angels' adoration, The glorious substance of the soul's salvation: It is the height of good and hate of ill, And only knowledge that doth knowledge know; It is in sum the substance of all bliss, Without whose blessing all thing nothing is. ANONYMOUS LYRICS. (1588-1603.) The writing of lyrics was an art to almost everyone's hand in the days of Elizabeth. Songs sung themselves; the music of words as well as of tones was in the air. The authorship of hundreds of these songs consequently is now unknown,-they came easily, and were easily forgotten. THE QUIET LIFE. From William Byrd's Psalms, Sonnets, and Songs, 1588. WHAT pleasure have great princes More dainty to their choice Than herdsmen wild, who careless And fortune's fate not fearing, Their dealings plain and rightful, They never know how spiteful. On favourite presumptuous All day their flocks each tendeth; Where gold and pearl are plenty; For lawyers and their pleading, Whence conscience judgeth plainly, They spend no money vainly. O happy who thus liveth! LOVE'S PERFECTIONS. This and the following piece are translations from the Italian, and appear in Yonge's Musica Transalpina, 1588, reprinted in Arber's Garner, vol. iii. N vain he seeks for beauty that excelleth, IN That hath not seen her eyes where Love sojourneth; How sweetly here and there the same she turneth. He knows not how Love healeth, and how he quelleth: That knows not how she sighs, and sweet beguileth; And how she sweetly speaks, and sweetly smileth. I SWEET LAMENTING. SAW my lady weeping, and Love did languish, SET THE TEST. From The Phonix Nest, 1593. ET me where Phoebus' heat the flowers slayeth, Or where continual snow withstands his forces; Set me where he his temperate rays displayeth, Or where he comes, or where he never courses! Set me in Fortune's grace, or else discharged; In sweet and pleasant air, or dark and glooming; Where days and nights are lesser or enlarged; In years of strength, in failing age, or blooming! Set me in heaven, or earth, or in the centre; Set me to these, or any other trial THE SHEPHERD'S PRAISE OF HIS SACRED DIANA. From The Phænix Nest, 1593. PRAISED be Diana's fair and harmless light, Praised be the dews, wherewith she moists the ground: Praised be her beams, the glory of the night, Praised be her power, by which all powers abound Praised be her nymphs, with whom she decks the woods, In heaven Queen she is among the spheres; She beauty is, by her the fair endure. Time wears her not, she doth his chariot guide; By her the virtue of the stars down slide, (M 349) K A knowledge pure it is her worth to know: THE SHEPHERD TO THE FLOWERS. WEET violets, Love's paradise, that spread SWEET Your gracious odours, which you couchèd bear Upon the gentle wing of some calm breathing wind, If by the favour of propitious stars you gain Be proud to touch those places: And when her warmth your moisture forth doth wear, You honours of the flow'ry meads, I pray, Vermilion roses, that with new day's rise The rich adornèd rays of roseate rising morn; Do pluck your pure, ere Phoebus view the land, And veil your gracious pomp, in lovely Nature's scorn; If chance my mistress traces Fast by your flowers to take the summer's air, To spread their tears, Adonis' death reporting, |