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Some weigh their pleasure by their lust,
Their wisdom by their rage of will;
Their treasure is their only trust;

A cloaked craft their store of skill:
But all the pleasure that I find
Is to maintain a quiet mind.

My wealth is health and perfect ease:
My conscience clear my chief defence;
I neither seek by bribes to please,
Nor by deceit to breed offence:
Thus do I live; thus will I die;
Would all did so as well as I!

JOHN LYLY.

(1554?-1606.)

These are the first of the numerous songs from the Elizabethan Dramatists included in this volume. Mr. Bullen has edited a volume of such Lyrics from the Dramatists (London, 1889). The first and second occur in Alexander and Campaspe, 1584 (acted 1581). The Hymn to Apollo is in Midas, 1592 (acted 1590): Mr. Symonds compares this Hymn to the Processional Hymns of the Greek Parthenia, and says that it "might well have been used at such a festival". The Fairy Song is from Endymion, 1591 (acted circa 1580). The songs, however, were not included with the plays until the collective edition of 1632. There is a modern edition of Lyly's Dramatic Works edited by F. W. Fairholt (London, 1858, 2 vols.).

APELLES' SONG.

CUPID and my Campaspe played

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 lip, 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 to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?

SPRING'S WELCOME.

WHAT bird so sings, yet so does wail?

O't is the ravished nightingale.

"Jug, jug, jug, jug, tereu," she cries,
And still her woes at midnight rise.
Brave prick-song! who is 't now we hear?
None but the lark so shrill and clear;
Now at heaven's gates she claps her wings,
The morn not waking till she sings.
Hark, hark, with what a pretty throat,
Poor robin redbreast tunes his note;
Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing,
Cuckoo, to welcome in the spring;
Cuckoo, to welcome in the spring!

HYMN TO APOLLO.

SING to Apollo, god of day,

Whose golden beams with morning play,

And make her eyes so brightly shine,

Aurora's face is called divine;

Sing to Phoebus and that throne

Of diamonds which he sits upon.
Io, pæans let us sing

To Physic's and to Poesy's king!

Crown all his altars with bright fire,
Laurels bind about his lyre,

A Daphnean coronet for his head,
The Muses dance about his bed;
When on his ravishing lute he plays,
Strew his temple round with bays.
Io, pæans let us sing

To the glittering Delian king!

FAIRY REVELS.

Omnes. PINCH him, pinch him black and blue ; Saucy mortals must not view

I Fairy.

2 Fairy.

3 Fairy.

What the queen of stars is doing,

Nor pry into our fairy wooing.

Pinch him blue—

And pinch him black

Let him not lack

Sharp nails to pinch him blue and red,

Till sleep has rocked his addlehead.

4 Fairy. For the trespass he hath done, Spots o'er all his flesh shall run. Kiss Endymion, kiss his eyes,

Then to our midnight heydeguyes.

ROBERT GREENE.

(1560?-1592.)

Greene's Lullaby is from his pastoral romance of Menaphon, 1589. The second song is from Pandosto, 1588, and the last from Philomela, 1592. Dyce has edited the Dramatic and Poetical Works of Greene, and his Complete Works, edited by Dr. Grosart, occupy fifteen volumes in the Huth Library. Selections from his verse occur in Bullen's Poems from Elizabethan Romances, and also accompany the last edition of the same editor's Lyrics from Elizabethan Dramatists. Additional selections from Greene and other Elizabethan writers of pastoral lyrics may be found in Chambers's English Pastorals, in the present series.

SEPHESTIA'S SONG TO HER CHILD.

WE

EEP not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee,
Mother's wag, pretty boy,

Father's sorrow, father's joy;
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and me,
He was glad, I was woe;
Fortune changed made him so,
When he left his pretty boy,

Last his sorrow, first his joy.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Streaming tears that never stint,
Like pearl drops from a flint,
Fell by course from his eyes,
That one another's place supplies;
Thus he grieved in every part,

Tears of blood fell from his heart,
When he left his pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,
When thou art old there 's grief enough for thee.
The wanton smiled, father wept,

Mother cried, baby leapt;

More he crowed, more we cried,
Nature could not sorrow hide:
He must go, he must kiss
Child and mother, baby bless;
For he left his pretty boy,

Father's sorrow, father's joy.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.

FAWNIA.

AH, were she pitiful as she is fair,

Ан

Or but as mild as she is seeming so,
Then were my hopes greater than my despair,
Then all the world were heaven, nothing woe.
Ah, were her heart relenting as her hand,

That seems to melt even with the mildest touch, Then knew I where to seat me in a land,

Under wide heavens, but yet I know not such.
So as she shows, she seems the budding rose,
Yet sweeter far than is an earthly flower,
Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows,
Compassed she is with thorns and cankered flower;
Yet were she willing to be plucked and worn,
She would be gathered, though she grew on thorn.

Ah, when she sings, all music else be still,
For none must be compared to her note;
Ne'er breathed such glee from Philomela's bill,
Nor from the morning-singer's swelling throat.
Ah, when she riseth from her blissful bed,

She comforts all the world, as doth the sun,
And at her sight the night's foul vapour 's fled;
When she is set, the gladsome day is done.

O glorious sun, imagine me the west,

Shine in my arms, and set thou in my breast!

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