LULLABY From PATIENT GRISSEL THOMAS DEKKER OLDEN slumbers kiss your eyes, Smiles awake you when you rise. Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry, And I will sing a lullaby : Rock them, rock them, lullaby. Care is heavy, therefore sleep you; Rock them, rock them, lullaby. ACK clouds away, and welcome day, With night we banish sorrow; Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft, To give my love good-morrow. Wings from the wind to please her mind, Notes from the lark I'll borrow. Bird, prune thy wing; nightingale, sing, To give my love good-morrow. To give my love good-morrow, Notes from them all I'll borrow. Wake from thy nest, robin redbreast, Give my fair love good-morrow. PRAISE OF CERES From SILVER AGE THOMAS HEYWOOD ITH fair Ceres, Queen of Grain, WIT The reaped fields we roam, Each country peasant, nymph and swain, Sing their harvest home, Whilst the Queen of Plenty hallows Growing fields as well as fallows. Echo, double all our lays, Make the champians sound THE HUNTED SQUIRREL From BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS WILLIAM BROWNE HEN as a nimble squirrel from the wood, Ranging the hedges for his filbert-food, Sits pertly on a bough his brown nuts cracking, And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking, Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys, To share with him, come with so great a noise That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke, And for his life leap to a neighbour oak, Thence to a beech, thence to a row of ashes; Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes The boys run dabbling through thick and thin, One tears his hose, another breaks his shin, This torn and tatter'd, hath with much ado Got by the briers; and that hath lost his shoe; This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste; Another cries behind for being last; With sticks and stones, and many a sounding hollow, Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray, 3 A THE DESCRIPTION OF WALLA From BRITANNIA'S PASTORALS WILLIAM BROWNE GREEN silk frock her comely shoulders clad, And took delight that such a seat it had, Which at her middle gathered up in pleats A love-knot girdle willing bondage threats. Down to her waist her mantle loose did fall, A deep fringe hung of rich and twisted gold. Upon her leg a pair of buskins white And, like her mantle, stitch'd with gold and green, (Fairer yet never wore the forest's queen). A silver quiver at her back she wore, With darts and arrows for the stag and boar; |