A Description of the Spring And now all nature seemed in love; New juice did stir the embracing vines, There stood my friend with patient skill, The showers were short, the weather mild, And now, though late, the modest rose the Queen of Bohemia You meaner beauties of the night, More by your number than your light, What are you when the moon shall rise? You curious chanters of the wood, By your weak accents; what's your praise, You violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known So when my mistress shall be seen Content Barnabe Barnes Ah, sweet Content, where is thy mild abode? Is it with shepherds, and light-hearted swains, Which sing upon the downs, and pipe abroad, Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains? Ah, sweet Content, where dost thou safely rest? In heaven, with angels? which the praises sing Of Him that made, and rules at His behest, The minds and hearts of every living thing. Ah, sweet Content, where doth thine harbour hold? Is it in churches, with religious men, Which please the gods with prayers manifold, And in their studies meditate it then? Whether thou dost in heaven or earth appear, Be where thou wilt: thou wilt not harbour here. NOTES In making this anthology of sixteenth-century poetry I have proceeded, first, as if no other anthology had ever been made, and I have read through the entire poetical literature of the period, so far as it was accessible to me, and so far as it came within the scope of a selection of separate poems; with the single exception, that I have relied on Mr. Bullen's wide knowledge and exquisite judgment in the case of the Elizabethan song-books, and have made my own choice from his final edition of his Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age. Campion I have read independently, but also in his edition; and it is by his kind permission that I have printed from these and other texts of his. After I had finished this course of reading, I consulted the anthologies of English verse which I knew: The Golden Treasury, Mr. Beeching's Paradise of English Poetry, Mr. Quiller Couch's Golden Pomp, Mr. Arber's British Anthologies and English Garner, Mr. Linton's Rare Poems. The only two poems that I can remember to have come upon for the first time in any of these anthologies are the lines of Howell, which I found in The Golden Pomp, and the full text of Verstegen's "Our Blessed Lady's Lullaby", which I found in Mr. Arber's Shakespeare Anthology. I have done my best to give an accurate text of all the poems which I have reprinted; always following the best edition known to me, and in as many cases as possible collating such texts with the original editions. I have thus been able to correct a considerable number of erroneous readings, which we find repeated in edition after edition. For one correction I am indebted to Mr. Bullen: the reading of "ripe" for "rich" in the (B 325) 465 2 H |