One silly cross wrought all my loss;

O frowning fortune, cursed fickle Dame,
For now I see, inconstancy

More in women than in men remain.

In black mourn I, all fears scorn I,
Love hath forlorn me, living in thrall;
Heart is bleeding, all help needing,

O cruel speeding, fraughted with gall.
My shepherd's pipe can sound no deal,
My wether's bell rings doleful knell.
My curtail dog that wont to have played,
Plays not at all, but seems afraid.
With sighs so deep, procure to weep,

In howling-wise to see my doleful plight,
How sighs resound, through heartless ground,
Like a thousand vanquished men in bloody fight.
Clear wells spring not, sweet birds sing not,
Green plants bring not forth their dye;
Herds stand weeping-flocks all sleeping,
Nymphs back peeping fearfully.

All our pleasures known to us poor swains,
All our merry meeting on the plains,
All our evening sports from us are fled,
All our love is lost, for love is dead.
Farewell sweet lass, thy like ne'er was,
For sweet content, the cause of all my moan;
Poor Corydon must live alone,

Other help for him, I see that there is none.

The variations from the version of 1599 are few, the only important one being "ren[e]ging" for "renying." The latter has no meaning; the former is used twice in the plays.

The only question in regard to the authorship of this poem is, whether Shakspere or "Ignoto" wrote it. The next poem printed in the "Helicon" is a part of No. xxi of the "Passionate Pilgrim."

Another of the Same Shepherds.

As it fell upon a day

In the merry month of May,

Sitting in a pleasant shade

Which a grove of myrtles made;

Beasts did leap, and birds did sing,

Trees did grow and plants did spring;
Everything did banish moan,

Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast against a thorn;
And there sung the dolefull'st ditty,
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry;
Teru, teru! by and by;
That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs, so lively shown,
Made me think upon mine own.
Ah! thought I, thou mourn'st in vain!
None takes pity on thy pain :

Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts they will not cheer thee:

King Pandion he is dead;

All thy friends are lapp'd in lead;
All thy fellow birds do sing,

Careless of thy sorrowing!

Even so, poor bird, like thee,

None alive will pity me.

The last two lines, Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps says, are new ones added to the first twenty-six in "The Passionate Pilgrim." Our own edition of the latter has those two lines, and the only variation is in the tenth line-up-till" for "against." There are thirty lines more in our edition. But we have another version of the whole, omitting the aforesaid two lines and a subsequent couplet. This version, curiously enough, is

headed "Address to the Nightingale," and is credited to Richard Barnfield, "about 1610." (Encyc. of Poetry, No. 121.) In 1598 it is said that the first twenty-six lines of this idyl appeared in an appendix to Barnfield's "Encomium;" in 1599 it reappeared enlarged to twice the length and was credited to Shakspere; in 1600 the first twenty-eight lines were republished in "England's Helicon " and subscribed "Ignoto."

We now transcribe from the "Helicon," No. xx of "The Passionate Pilgrim" much amended and enlarged:

The Passionate Shepherd to his love.
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, [and] hills and fields,
Woods, or steepie mountains yields.*
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing 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
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.
A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold:

A belt of straw, and ivy buds

With coral clasps and amber studs.

* The grammar of this verse is shocking both here and in the version of 1599. And there are considerable variations in the two versions. In that of 1599 the first word "Come " is omitted, without which the song could hardly be sung. Other slight defects of measure appear in both. But the editor of Marlowe's Works has carefully corrected the grammar and the measure.

to a circle of friends and perchance a few enemies; for, in 1599, when he interceded with the Queen for his dear friend Essex, then under arrest on account of a treasonable pamphlet being dedicated to him, her Majesty flung at Bacon “ a matter which grew from him, but went after about in others' names," being in fact the play of "Richard II," which, in that and the preceding year, had a great run on the stage, and had gone through two editions, but, for prudential reasons, with the scene containing the deposition of the king left out.

But even in the "Sonnets the fact appears that the author has been writing for the stage:

"Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there,

And made myself a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offenses of affections new ;

Most true it is that I have looked on truth

Askance and strangely; but by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth,
And worse essays proved thee my best of love."

"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide

Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,

And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand :
Pity me then and wish I were renewed."

Here is not only a private confession of being compelled to produce plays for subsistence, but a sorrowful acknowledgment that thereby his "name receives a brand."

Yet it must not be supposed that Bacon was publicly known at any time as a play writer. His first

publication, the "Essays," was in 1597, and Shakspere's name first appeared on the title page of a Play in 1598, by which time nearly half of the Plays had been written or sketched, and six had been printed, all without the author's name. And when the first collection was published in the "Folio" of 1623, (seven years after Shakspere's death,) it included some Plays never before heard of, and eighteen never before printed.

Lord Coke, who was Bacon's most jealous rival and adversary, seems never to have suspected him of play writing. Nor did the watchful Puritanic mother of the two bachelors of Gray's Inn ever dream that her studious younger son was engaged in such sinful work.

In Sonnet 76 the writer deplores his want of variety of style, and fears that this fault will almost disclose his secret authorship:

"Why is my verse so barren of new pride,

So far from variation or quick change?

Why with the time do I not glance aside,

To new-found methods and to compounds strange ?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,

And keep invention in a noted weed,

That every word doth almost tell my name,

Showing their birth and where they did proceed?" Bacon having begun to produce plays for Shakspere's theater before 1590, the authorship of which was afterward assumed by the actor and proprietor, it became necessary also to avoid being publicly known as a writer of sonnets. Therefore, in view of the circulation and ultimate publication of this poem, he facetiously disguised the identity of the writer by calling himself "Will." Three years later he dedicated a