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A Roadside Harp: A Book of Verses

Chapter 31: A Seventeenth-Century Song
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About This Book

This collection gathers lyrical and narrative poems that range from ballads and sonnets to short meditations. The verses move between rural and urban settings, evoking English and Irish countryside, Italian art and London streets, and blend historical, religious, and classical allusion with close natural observation. Recurring concerns include time and memory, faith and loss, friendship and artistic response; many pieces treat ruined churches, portraiture, and small domestic scenes with musical language and formal polish. Alternating narrative storytelling and reflective shorter lyrics, the work balances nostalgic melancholy with bright sensory detail and a cultivated, songlike cadence.

SHE alone of Shepherdesses
With her blue disdayning eyes,
Wo’d not hark a Kyng that dresses
All his lute in sighes:
Yet to winne
Katheryn,
I elect for mine Emprise.
Distaunce, cold, delay, and danger,
Build the four walles of her bower;
She ’s noe Sweete for any stranger,
She ’s noe valley flower:
And to winne
Katheryn,
To her height my heart can Tower!
Uppe to Beautie’s promontory
I will climb, nor loudlie call
Perfect and escaping glory
Folly, if I fall:
Well to winne
Katheryn!
To be worth her is my all.