Dilettante Quartette

From Painting by F. Hiddemann

For they were rivals, and their mistress, Har

Into a pretty anger, that a bird

Whom art had never taught clefs, moods, or

notes,

Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice:
To end the controversy, in a rapture
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick,
That there was curiosity and cunning,
Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.

Am. Now for the bird.

Men.

The bird, ordained to be

Music's first martyr, strove to imitate

These several sounds; which, when her warbling throat

Failed in, for grief, down dropped she on his lute,

And broke her heart! It was the quaintest sadness

To see the conqueror upon her hearse

To weep a funeral elegy of tears;

That, trust me, my Amethus, I could chide

Mine own unmanly weakness, that made me A fellow-mourner with him.

Am.

I believe thee.

Men. He looked upon the trophies of his

art,

Then sighed, then wiped his eyes, then sighed, and cried,

Alas, poor creature! I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it;

Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,
Shall nevermore betray a harmless peace
To an untimely end;" and in that sorrow,
As he was pashing it against a tree,

I suddenly stepped in.

John Ford.

TO HIS LUTE

My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow

With thy green mother in some shady grove, When immelodious winds but made thee move, And birds on thee their ramage did bestow.

Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve,

Which used in such harmonious strains to

flow,