From the Lyrical Poems of Robert Herrick

or take Lovelace, 'To Lucasta,' Waller, in his 'Go, lovely rose,'—we have a finish and condensation which Herrick hardly attains; a literary quality alien from his 'woodnotes wild,' which may help us to understand the very small appreciation he met from his age. He had 'a pretty pastoral gale of fancy,' said Phillips, cursorily dismissing Herrick in his THEATRUM: not suspecting how inevitably artifice and mannerism, if fashionable for awhile, pass into forgetfulness, whilst the simple cry of Nature partake in her permanence.

Donne and Marvell, stronger men, leave also no mark on our poet. The elaborate thought, the metrical harshness of the first, could find no counterpart in Herrick; whilst Marvell, beyond him in imaginative power, though twisting it too often into contortion and excess, appears to have been little known as a lyrist then:—as, indeed, his great merits have never reached anything like due popular recognition. Yet Marvell's natural description is nearer Herrick's in felicity and insight than any of the poets named above. Nor, again, do we trace anything of Herbert or Vaughan in Herrick's NOBLE NUMBERS, which, though unfairly judged if held insincere, are obviously far distant from the intense conviction, the depth and inner fervour of his high-toned contemporaries.

It is among the great dramatists of this age that we find the only English influences palpably operative on this singularly original writer. The greatest, in truth, is wholly absent: and it is remarkable that although Herrick may have joined in the wit-contests and genialities of the literary clubs in London soon after Shakespeare's death, and certainly lived in friendship with some who had known him, yet his name is never mentioned in the poetical commemorations of the HESPERIDES. In Herrick, echoes from Fletcher's idyllic pieces in the FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS are faintly traceable; from his songs, 'Hear what Love can do,' and 'The lusty Spring,' more distinctly. But to Ben Jonson, whom Herrick addresses as his patron saint in song, and ranks on the highest list of his friends, his obligations are much more perceptible. In fact, Jonson's non-dramatic poetry,—the EPIGRAMS and FOREST of 1616, the UNDERWOODS of 1641, (he died in 1637),—supply models, generally admirable in point of art, though of very unequal merit in their execution and contents, of the principal forms under which we may range Herrick's HESPERIDES. The graceful love-song, the celebration of feasts and wit, the encomia of friends, the epigram as then understood, are all here represented: even Herrick's vein in natural description is prefigured in the odes to Penshurst and Sir Robert Wroth, of 1616. And it is in the religious pieces of the NOBLE NUMBERS, for which Jonson afforded the least copious precedents, that, as a rule, Herrick is least successful.

Even if we had not the verses on his own book, (the most noteworthy of which are here printed as PREFATORY,) in proof that Herrick was no careless singer, but a true artist, working with conscious knowledge of his art, we might have inferred the fact from the choice of Jonson as his model. That great poet, as Clarendon justly remarked, had 'judgment to order and govern fancy, rather than excess of fancy: his productions being slow and upon deliberation.' No writer could be better fitted for the guidance of one so fancy-free as Herrick; to whom the curb, in the old phrase, was more needful than the spur, and whose invention, more fertile and varied than Jonson's, was ready at once to fill up the moulds of form provided. He does this with a lively facility, contrasting much with the evidence of labour in his master's work. Slowness and deliberation are the last qualities suggested by Herrick. Yet it may be doubted whether the volatile ease, the effortless grace, the wild bird-like fluency with which he

Scatters his loose notes in the waste of air

are not, in truth, the results of exquisite art working in cooperation with the gifts of nature. The various readings which our few remaining manuscripts or printed versions have supplied to Mr Grosart's 'Introduction,' attest the minute and curious care with which Herrick polished and strengthened his own work: his airy facility, his seemingly spontaneous melodies, as with Shelley—his counterpart in pure lyrical art within this century—were earned by conscious labour; perfect freedom was begotten of perfect art;—nor, indeed, have excellence and permanence any other parent.

With the error that regards Herrick as a careless singer is closely twined that which ranks him in the school of that master of elegant pettiness who has usurped and abused the name Anacreon; as a mere light-hearted writer of pastorals, a gay and frivolous Renaissance amourist. He has indeed those elements: but with them is joined the seriousness of an age which knew that the light mask of classicalism and bucolic allegory could be worn only as an ornament, and that life held much deeper and further-reaching issues than were visible to the narrow horizons within which Horace or Martial circumscribed the range of their art. Between the most intensely poetical, and so, greatest, among the French poets of this century, and Herrick, are many points of likeness. He too, with Alfred de Musset, might have said

Quoi que nous puissions faire,
Je souffre; il est trop tard; le monde s'est fait vieux.
Une immense esperance a traverse la terre;
Malgre nous vers le ciel il faut lever les yeux.

Indeed, Herrick's deepest debt to ancient literature lies not in the models which he directly imitated, nor in the Anacreontic tone which with singular felicity he has often taken. These are common to many writers with him:—nor will he who cannot learn more from the great ancient world ever rank among poets of high order, or enter the innermost sanctuary of art. But, the power to describe men and things as the poet sees them with simple sincerity, insight, and grace: to paint scenes and imaginations as perfect organic wholes;—carrying with it the gift to clothe each picture, as if by unerring instinct, in fit metrical form, giving to each its own music; beginning without affectation, and rounding off without effort;—the power, in a word, to leave simplicity, sanity, and beauty as the last impressions lingering on our minds, these gifts are at once the true bequest of classicalism, and the reason why (until modern effort equals them) the study of that Hellenic and Latin poetry in which these gifts are eminent above all other literatures yet created, must be essential. And it is success in precisely these excellences which is here claimed for Herrick. He is classical in the great and eternal sense of the phrase: and much more so, probably, than he was himself aware of. No poet in fact is so far from dwelling in a past or foreign world: it is the England, if not of 1648, at least of his youth, in which he lives and moves and loves: his Bucolics show no trace of Sicily: his Anthea and Julia wear no 'buckles of the purest gold,' nor have anything about them foreign to Middlesex or Devon. Herrick's imagination has no far horizons: like Burns and Crabbe fifty years since, or Barnes (that exquisite and neglected pastoralist of fair Dorset, perfect within his narrower range as Herrick) to-day, it is his own native land only which he sees and paints: even the fairy world in which, at whatever inevitable interval, he is second to Shakespeare, is pure English; or rather, his elves live in an elfin county of their own, and are all but severed from humanity. Within that greater circle of Shakespeare, where Oberon and Ariel and their fellows move, aiding or injuring mankind, and reflecting human life in a kind of unconscious parody, Herrick cannot walk: and it may have been due to his good sense and true feeling for art, that here, where resemblance might have seemed probable, he borrows nothing from MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM or TEMPEST. if we are moved by the wider range of Byron's or Shelley's sympathies, there is a charm, also, in this sweet insularity of Herrick; a narrowness perhaps, yet carrying with it a healthful reality absent from the vapid and artificial 'cosmopolitanism' that did such wrong on Goethe's genius. If he has not the exotic blooms and strange odours which poets who derive from literature show in their conservatories, Herrick has the fresh breeze and thyme-bed fragrance of open moorland, the grace and greenery of English meadows: with Homer and Dante, he too shares the strength and inspiration which come from touch of a man's native soil.

What has been here sketched is not planned so much as a criticism in form on Herrick's poetry as an attempt to seize his relations to his predecessors and contemporaries. If we now tentatively inquire what place may be assigned to him in our literature at large, Herrick has no single lyric to show equal, in pomp of music, brilliancy of diction, or elevation of sentiment to some which Spenser before, Milton in his own time, Dryden and Gray, Wordsworth and Shelley, since have given us. Nor has he, as already noticed, the peculiar finish and reserve (if the phrase may be allowed) traceable, though rarely, in Ben Jonson and others of the seventeenth century. He does not want passion; yet his passion wants concentration: it is too ready, also, to dwell on externals: imagination with him generally appears clothed in forms of fancy. Among his contemporaries, take Crashaw's 'Wishes': Sir J. Beaumont's elegy on his child Gervase: take Bishop King's 'Surrender':

My once-dear Love!—hapless, that I no more
Must call thee so. . . . The rich affection's store
That fed our hopes, lies now exhaust and spent,
Like sums of treasure unto bankrupts lent:—
We that did nothing study but the way
To love each other, with which thoughts the day
Rose with delight to us, and with them set,
Must learn the hateful art, how to forget!
—Fold back our arms, take home our fruitless loves,
That must new fortunes try, like turtle doves
Dislodged from their haunts. We must in tears
Unwind a love knit up in many years.
In this one kiss I here surrender thee
Back to thyself: so thou again art free:—

When I think on the happy days
I spent wi' you, my dearie,
And now what lands between us lie,
How can I be but eerie!

How slow ye move, ye heavy hours,
As ye were wae and weary!
It was na sae ye glinted by
When I was wi' my dearie:—

—O! there is an intensity here, a note of passion beyond the deepest of Herrick's. This tone (whether from temperament or circumstance or scheme of art), is wanting to the HESPERIDES and NOBLE NUMBERS: nor does Herrick's lyre, sweet and varied as it is, own that purple chord, that more inwoven harmony, possessed by poets of greater depth and splendour,—by Shakespeare and Milton often, by Spenser more rarely. But if we put aside these 'greater gods' of song, with Sidney,—in the Editor's judgment Herrick's mastery (to use a brief expression), both over Nature and over Art, clearly assigns to him the first place as lyrical poet, in the strict and pure sense of the phrase, among all who flourished during the interval between Henry V and a hundred years since. Single pieces of equal, a few of higher, quality, we have, indeed, meanwhile received, not only from the master-singers who did not confine themselves to the Lyric, but from many poets—some the unknown contributors to our early anthologies, then Jonson, Marvell, Waller, Collins, and others, with whom we reach the beginning of the wider sweep which lyrical poetry has since taken. Yet, looking at the whole work, not at the selected jewels, of this great and noble multitude, Herrick, as lyrical poet strictly, offers us by far the most homogeneous, attractive, and varied treasury. No one else among lyrists within the period defined, has such unfailing freshness: so much variety within the sphere prescribed to himself: such closeness to nature, whether in description or in feeling: such easy fitness in language: melody so unforced and delightful. His dull pages are much less frequent: he has more lines, in his own phrase, 'born of the royal blood': the

Inflata rore non Achaico verba

are rarer with him: although superficially mannered, nature is so much nearer to him, that far fewer of his pieces have lost vitality and interest through adherence to forms of feeling or fashions of thought now obsolete. A Roman contemporary is described by the younger Pliny in words very appropriate to Herrick: who, in fact, if Greek in respect of his method and style, in the contents of his poetry displays the 'frankness of nature and vivid sense of life' which criticism assigns as marks of the great Roman poets. FACIT VERSUS, QUALES CATULLUS AUT CALVUS. QUANTUM ILLIS LEPORIS, DULCEDINIS, AMARITUDINIS AMORIS! INSERIT SANE, SED DATA OPERA, MOLLIBUS LENIBUSQUE DURIUSCULOS QUOSDAM; ET HOC, QUASI CATULLUS AUT CALVUS. Many pieces have been, here refused admittance, whether from coarseness of phrase or inferior value: yet these are rarely defective in the lyrical art, which, throughout the writer's work, is so simple and easy as almost to escape notice through its very excellence. In one word, Herrick, in a rare and special sense, is unique.

To these qualities we may, perhaps, ascribe the singular neglect which, so far as we may infer, he met with in his own age, and certainly in the century following. For the men of the Restoration period he was too natural, too purely poetical: he had not the learned polish, the political allusion, the tone of the city, the didactic turn, which were then and onwards demanded from poetry. In the next age, no tradition consecrated his name; whilst writers of a hundred years before were then too remote for familiarity, and not remote enough for reverence. Moving on to our own time, when some justice has at length been conceded to him, Herrick has to meet the great rivalry of the poets who, from Burns and Cowper to Tennyson, have widened and deepened the lyrical sphere, making it at once on the one hand more intensely personal, on the other, more free and picturesque in the range of problems dealt with: whilst at the same time new and richer lyrical forms, harmonies more intricate and seven-fold, have been created by them, as in Hellas during her golden age of song, to embody ideas and emotions unknown or unexpressed under Tudors and Stuarts. To this latter superiority Herrick would, doubtless, have bowed, as he bowed before Ben Jonson's genius. 'Rural ditties,' and 'oaten flute' cannot bear the competition of the full modern orchestra. Yet this author need not fear! That exquisite: and lofty pleasure which it is the first and the last aim of all true art to give, must, by its own nature, be lasting also. As the eyesight fluctuates, and gives the advantage to different colours in turn, so to the varying moods of the mind the same beauty does not always seem equally beautiful. Thus from the 'purple light' of our later poetry there are hours in which we may look to the daffodil and rose-tints of Herrick's old Arcadia, for refreshment and delight. And the pleasure which he gives is as eminently wholesome as pleasurable. Like the holy river of Virgil, to the souls who drink of him, Herrick offers 'securos latices.' He is conspicuously free from many of the maladies incident to his art. Here is no overstrain, no spasmodic cry, so wire-drawn analysis or sensational rhetoric, no music without sense, no mere second-hand literary inspiration, no mannered archaism:—above all, no sickly sweetness, no subtle, unhealthy affectation. Throughout his work, whether when it is strong, or in the less worthy portions, sanity, sincerity, simplicity, lucidity, are everywhere the characteristics of Herrick: in these, not in his pretty Pagan masquerade, he shows the note,—the only genuine note,—of Hellenic descent. Hence, through whatever changes and fashions poetry may pass, her true lovers he is likely to 'please now, and please for long.' His verse, in the words of a poet greater than himself, is of that quality which 'adds sunlight to daylight'; which is able to 'make the happy happier.' He will, it may be hoped, carry to the many Englands across the seas, east and west, pictures of English life exquisite in truth and grace:—to the more fortunate inhabitants (as they must perforce hold themselves!) of the old country, her image, as she was two centuries since, will live in the 'golden apples' of the West, offered to us by this sweet singer of Devonshire. We have greater poets, not a few; none more faithful to nature as he saw her, none more perfect in his art;—none, more companionable:—

C H R Y S O M E L A

A SELECTION FROM THE LYRICAL POEMS OF ROBERT HERRICK

PREFATORY

1. THE ARGUMENT OF HIS BOOK

     I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,
     Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers;
     I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
     Of bride-grooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes.
     I write of Youth, of Love;—and have access
     By these, to sing of cleanly wantonness;
     I sing of dews, of rains, and, piece by piece,
     Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris.
     I sing of times trans-shifting; and I write
     How roses first came red, and lilies white.
     I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing
     The court of Mab, and of the Fairy King.
     I write of Hell; I sing, and ever shall
     Of Heaven,—and hope to have it after all.

2. TO HIS MUSE

     Whither, mad maiden, wilt thou roam?
     Far safer 'twere to stay at home;
     Where thou mayst sit, and piping, please
     The poor and private cottages.
     Since cotes and hamlets best agree
     With this thy meaner minstrelsy.
     There with the reed thou mayst express
     The shepherd's fleecy happiness;
     And with thy Eclogues intermix:
     Some smooth and harmless Bucolics.
     There, on a hillock, thou mayst sing
     Unto a handsome shepherdling;
     Or to a girl, that keeps the neat,
     With breath more sweet than violet.
     There, there, perhaps such lines as these
     May take the simple villages;
     But for the court, the country wit
     Is despicable unto it.
     Stay then at home, and do not go
     Or fly abroad to seek for woe;
     Contempts in courts and cities dwell
     No critic haunts the poor man's cell,
     Where thou mayst hear thine own lines read
     By no one tongue there censured.
     That man's unwise will search for ill,
     And may prevent it, sitting still.

3. WHEN HE WOULD HAVE HIS VERSES READ

     In sober mornings, do not thou rehearse
     The holy incantation of a verse;
     But when that men have both well drunk, and fed,
     Let my enchantments then be sung or read.
     When laurel spirts i' th' fire, and when the hearth
     Smiles to itself, and gilds the roof with mirth;
     When up the Thyrse is raised, and when the sound
     Of sacred orgies, flies A round, A round;
     When the rose reigns, and locks with ointments shine,
     Let rigid Cato read these lines of mine.

4. TO HIS BOOK

     Make haste away, and let one be
     A friendly patron unto thee;
     Lest, rapt from hence, I see thee lie
     Torn for the use of pastery;
     Or see thy injured leaves serve well
     To make loose gowns for mackarel;
     Or see the grocers, in a trice,
     Make hoods of thee to serve out spice.

5. TO HIS BOOK

     Take mine advice, and go not near
     Those faces, sour as vinegar;
     For these, and nobler numbers, can
     Ne'er please the supercilious man.

6. TO HIS BOOK

     Be bold, my Book, nor be abash'd, or fear
     The cutting thumb-nail, or the brow severe;
     But by the Muses swear, all here is good,
     If but well read, or ill read, understood.

7. TO MISTRESS KATHARINE BRADSHAW, THE LOVELY, THAT CROWNED HIM WITH LAUREL

     My Muse in meads has spent her many hours
     Sitting, and sorting several sorts of flowers,
     To make for others garlands; and to set
     On many a head here, many a coronet.
     But amongst all encircled here, not one
     Gave her a day of coronation;
     Till you, sweet mistress, came and interwove
     A laurel for her, ever young as Love.
     You first of all crown'd her; she must, of due,
     Render for that, a crown of life to you.

8. TO HIS VERSES

     What will ye, my poor orphans, do,
     When I must leave the world and you;
     Who'll give ye then a sheltering shed,
     Or credit ye, when I am dead?
     Who'll let ye by their fire sit,
     Although ye have a stock of wit,
     Already coin'd to pay for it?
     —I cannot tell: unless there be
     Some race of old humanity
     Left, of the large heart and long hand,
     Alive, as noble Westmorland;
     Or gallant Newark; which brave two
     May fost'ring fathers be to you.
     If not, expect to be no less
     Ill used, than babes left fatherless.

9. NOT EVERY DAY FIT FOR VERSE

     'Tis not ev'ry day that I
     Fitted am to prophesy:
     No, but when the spirit fills
     The fantastic pannicles,
     Full of fire, then I write
     As the Godhead doth indite.
     Thus enraged, my lines are hurl'd,
     Like the Sibyl's, through the world:
     Look how next the holy fire
     Either slakes, or doth retire;
     So the fancy cools:—till when
     That brave spirit comes again.

10. HIS PRAYER TO BEN JONSON

     When I a verse shall make,
     Know I have pray'd thee,
     For old religion's sake,
     Saint Ben, to aid me

     Make the way smooth for me,
     When, I, thy Herrick,
     Honouring thee on my knee
     Offer my Lyric.

     Candles I'll give to thee,
     And a new altar;
     And thou, Saint Ben, shalt be
     Writ in my psalter.

11. HIS REQUEST TO JULIA

     Julia, if I chance to die
     Ere I print my poetry,
     I most humbly thee desire
     To commit it to the fire:
     Better 'twere my book were dead,
     Than to live not perfected.

12. TO HIS BOOK

     Go thou forth, my book, though late,
     Yet be timely fortunate.
     It may chance good luck may send
     Thee a kinsman or a friend,
     That may harbour thee, when I
     With my fates neglected lie.
     If thou know'st not where to dwell,
     See, the fire's by.—Farewell!

13. HIS POETRY HIS PILLAR

     Only a little more
     I have to write:
     Then I'll give o'er,
     And bid the world good-night.

     'Tis but a flying minute,
     That I must stay,
     Or linger in it:
     And then I must away.

     O Time, that cut'st down all,
     And scarce leav'st here
     Memorial
     Of any men that were;

     —How many lie forgot
     In vaults beneath,
     And piece-meal rot
     Without a fame in death?

     Behold this living stone
     I rear for me,
     Ne'er to be thrown
     Down, envious Time, by thee.

     Pillars let some set up
     If so they please;
     Here is my hope,
     And my Pyramides.

14. TO HIS BOOK

     If hap it must, that I must see thee lie
     Absyrtus-like, all torn confusedly;
     With solemn tears, and with much grief of heart,
     I'll recollect thee, weeping, part by part;
     And having wash'd thee, close thee in a chest
     With spice; that done, I'll leave thee to thy rest.

15. UPON HIMSELF

     Thou shalt not all die; for while Love's fire shines
     Upon his altar, men shall read thy lines;
     And learn'd musicians shall, to honour Herrick's
     Fame, and his name, both set and sing his lyrics.

     To his book's end this last line he'd have placed:—
     Jocund his Muse was, but his Life was chaste.

IDYLLICA

16. THE COUNTRY LIFE:

     TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER,
     GROOM OF THE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTY

     Sweet country life, to such unknown,
     Whose lives are others', not their own!
     But serving courts and cities, be
     Less happy, less enjoying thee.
     Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam
     To seek and bring rough pepper home:
     Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove
     To bring from thence the scorched clove:
     Nor, with the loss of thy loved rest,
     Bring'st home the ingot from the West.
     No, thy ambition's master-piece
     Flies no thought higher than a fleece:
     Or how to pay thy hinds, and clear
     All scores: and so to end the year:
     But walk'st about thine own dear bounds,
     Not envying others' larger grounds:
     For well thou know'st, 'tis not th' extent
     Of land makes life, but sweet content.
     When now the cock (the ploughman's horn)
     Calls forth the lily-wristed morn;
     Then to thy corn-fields thou dost go,
     Which though well soil'd, yet thou dost know
     That the best compost for the lands
     Is the wise master's feet, and hands.
     There at the plough thou find'st thy team,
     With a hind whistling there to them:
     And cheer'st them up, by singing how
     The kingdom's portion is the plough.
     This done, then to th' enamell'd meads
     Thou go'st; and as thy foot there treads,
     Thou seest a present God-like power
     Imprinted in each herb and flower:
     And smell'st the breath of great-eyed kine,
     Sweet as the blossoms of the vine.
     Here thou behold'st thy large sleek neat
     Unto the dew-laps up in meat:
     And, as thou look'st, the wanton steer,
     The heifer, cow, and ox draw near,
     To make a pleasing pastime there.
     These seen, thou go'st to view thy flocks
     Of sheep, safe from the wolf and fox,
     And find'st their bellies there as full
     Of short sweet grass, as backs with wool:
     And leav'st them, as they feed and fill,
     A shepherd piping on a hill.

     For sports, for pageantry, and plays,
     Thou hast thy eves, and holydays:
     On which the young men and maids meet,
     To exercise their dancing feet:
     Tripping the comely country Round,
     With daffadils and daisies crown'd.
     Thy wakes, thy quintels, here thou hast,
     Thy May-poles too with garlands graced;
     Thy Morris-dance; thy Whitsun-ale;
     Thy shearing-feast, which never fail.
     Thy harvest home; thy wassail bowl,
     That's toss'd up after Fox i' th' hole:
     Thy mummeries; thy Twelve-tide kings
     And queens; thy Christmas revellings:
     Thy nut-brown mirth, thy russet wit,
     And no man pays too dear for it.—
     To these, thou hast thy times to go
     And trace the hare i' th' treacherous snow:
     Thy witty wiles to draw, and get
     The lark into the trammel net:
     Thou hast thy cockrood, and thy glade
     To take the precious pheasant made:
     Thy lime-twigs, snares, and pit-falls then
     To catch the pilfering birds, not men.

     —O happy life! if that their good
     The husbandmen but understood!
     Who all the day themselves do please,
     And younglings, with such sports as these:
     And lying down, have nought t' affright
     Sweet Sleep, that makes more short the night.
     CAETERA DESUNT—

17. TO PHILLIS, TO LOVE AND LIVE WITH HIM

     Live, live with me, and thou shalt see
     The pleasures I'll prepare for thee:
     What sweets the country can afford
     Shall bless thy bed, and bless thy board.
     The soft sweet moss shall be thy bed,
     With crawling woodbine over-spread:
     By which the silver-shedding streams
     Shall gently melt thee into dreams.
     Thy clothing next, shall be a gown
     Made of the fleeces' purest down.
     The tongues of kids shall be thy meat;
     Their milk thy drink; and thou shalt eat
     The paste of filberts for thy bread
     With cream of cowslips buttered:
     Thy feasting-table shall be hills
     With daisies spread, and daffadils;
     Where thou shalt sit, and Red-breast by,
     For meat, shall give thee melody.
     I'll give thee chains and carcanets
     Of primroses and violets.
     A bag and bottle thou shalt have,
     That richly wrought, and this as brave;
     So that as either shall express
     The wearer's no mean shepherdess.
     At shearing-times, and yearly wakes,
     When Themilis his pastime makes,
     There thou shalt be; and be the wit,
     Nay more, the feast, and grace of it.
     On holydays, when virgins meet
     To dance the heys with nimble feet,
     Thou shalt come forth, and then appear
     The Queen of Roses for that year.
     And having danced ('bove all the best)
     Carry the garland from the rest,
     In wicker-baskets maids shall bring
     To thee, my dearest shepherdling,
     The blushing apple, bashful pear,
     And shame-faced plum, all simp'ring there.
     Walk in the groves, and thou shalt find
     The name of Phillis in the rind
     Of every straight and smooth-skin tree;
     Where kissing that, I'll twice kiss thee.
     To thee a sheep-hook I will send,
     Be-prank'd with ribbands, to this end,
     This, this alluring hook might be
     Less for to catch a sheep, than me.
     Thou shalt have possets, wassails fine,
     Not made of ale, but spiced wine;
     To make thy maids and self free mirth,
     All sitting near the glitt'ring hearth.
     Thou shalt have ribbands, roses, rings,
     Gloves, garters, stockings, shoes, and strings
     Of winning colours, that shall move
     Others to lust, but me to love.
     —These, nay, and more, thine own shall be,
     If thou wilt love, and live with me.

18. THE WASSAIL

     Give way, give way, ye gates, and win
     An easy blessing to your bin
     And basket, by our entering in.

     May both with manchet stand replete;
     Your larders, too, so hung with meat,
     That though a thousand, thousand eat,

     Yet, ere twelve moons shall whirl about
     Their silv'ry spheres, there's none may doubt
     But more's sent in than was served out.

     Next, may your dairies prosper so,
     As that your pans no ebb may know;
     But if they do, the more to flow,

     Like to a solemn sober stream,
     Bank'd all with lilies, and the cream
     Of sweetest cowslips filling them.

     Then may your plants be press'd with fruit,
     Nor bee or hive you have be mute,
     But sweetly sounding like a lute.

     Last, may your harrows, shares, and ploughs,
     Your stacks, your stocks, your sweetest mows,
     All prosper by your virgin-vows.

     —Alas! we bless, but see none here,
     That brings us either ale or beer;
     In a dry-house all things are near.

     Let's leave a longer time to wait,
     Where rust and cobwebs bind the gate;
     And all live here with needy fate;

     Where chimneys do for ever weep
     For want of warmth, and stomachs keep
     With noise the servants' eyes from sleep.

     It is in vain to sing, or stay
     Our free feet here, but we'll away:
     Yet to the Lares this we'll say:

     'The time will come when you'll be sad,
     'And reckon this for fortune bad,
     'T'ave lost the good ye might have had.'

19. THE FAIRIES

     If ye will with Mab find grace,
     Set each platter in his place;
     Rake the fire up, and get
     Water in, ere sun be set.
     Wash your pails and cleanse your dairies,
     Sluts are loathsome to the fairies;
     Sweep your house; Who doth not so,
     Mab will pinch her by the toe.

20. CEREMONY UPON CANDLEMAS EVE

     Down with the rosemary, and so
     Down with the bays and misletoe;
     Down with the holly, ivy, all
     Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
     That so the superstitious find
     No one least branch there left behind;
     For look, how many leaves there be
     Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
     So many goblins you shall see.

21. CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS EVE

     Down with the rosemary and bays,
     Down with the misletoe;
     Instead of holly, now up-raise
     The greener box, for show.

     The holly hitherto did sway;
     Let box now domineer,
     Until the dancing Easter-day,
     Or Easter's eve appear.

     Then youthful box, which now hath grace
     Your houses to renew,
     Grown old, surrender must his place
     Unto the crisped yew.

     When yew is out, then birch comes in,
     And many flowers beside,
     Both of a fresh and fragrant kin,
     To honour Whitsuntide.

     Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
     With cooler oaken boughs,
     Come in for comely ornaments,
     To re-adorn the house.
     Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
     New things succeed, as former things grow old.

22. THE CEREMONIES FOR CANDLEMAS DAY

     Kindle the Christmas brand, and then
     Till sunset let it burn;
     Which quench'd, then lay it up again,
     Till Christmas next return.

     Part must be kept, wherewith to teend
     The Christmas log next year;
     And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend
     Can do no mischief there.

23. FAREWELL FROST, OR WELCOME SPRING

     Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appear
     Reclothed in fresh and verdant diaper;
     Thaw'd are the snows; and now the lusty Spring
     Gives to each mead a neat enamelling;
     The palms put forth their gems, and every tree
     Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry.
     The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings
     With warbling notes her Terean sufferings.
     —What gentle winds perspire! as if here
     Never had been the northern plunderer
     To strip the trees and fields, to their distress,
     Leaving them to a pitied nakedness.
     And look how when a frantic storm doth tear
     A stubborn oak or holm, long growing there,—
     But lull'd to calmness, then succeeds a breeze
     That scarcely stirs the nodding leaves of trees;
     So when this war, which tempest-like doth spoil
     Our salt, our corn, our honey, wine, and oil,
     Falls to a temper, and doth mildly cast
     His inconsiderate frenzy off, at last,
     The gentle dove may, when these turmoils cease,
     Bring in her bill, once more, the branch of Peace.

24. TO THE MAIDS, TO WALK ABROAD

     Come, sit we under yonder tree,
     Where merry as the maids we'll be;
     And as on primroses we sit,
     We'll venture, if we can, at wit;
     If not, at draw-gloves we will play,
     So spend some minutes of the day;
     Or else spin out the thread of sands,
     Playing at questions and commands:
     Or tell what strange tricks Love can do,
     By quickly making one of two.
     Thus we will sit and talk, but tell
     No cruel truths of Philomel,
     Or Phillis, whom hard fate forced on
     To kill herself for Demophon;
     But fables we'll relate; how Jove
     Put on all shapes to get a Love;
     As now a satyr, then a swan,
     A bull but then, and now a man.
     Next, we will act how young men woo,
     And sigh and kiss as lovers do;
     And talk of brides; and who shall make
     That wedding-smock, this bridal-cake,
     That dress, this sprig, that leaf, this vine,
     That smooth and silken columbine.
     This done, we'll draw lots who shall buy
     And gild the bays and rosemary;
     What posies for our wedding rings;
     What gloves we'll give, and ribbonings;
     And smiling at our selves, decree
     Who then the joining priest shall be;
     What short sweet prayers shall be said,
     And how the posset shall be made
     With cream of lilies, not of kine,
     And maiden's-blush for spiced wine.
     Thus having talk'd, we'll next commend
     A kiss to each, and so we'll end.