Here 'gan the reed and merry bagpipe play,
Shrill as a thrush upon a morn of May,

A rural music for an heavenly train;

And every shepherdess danced with her swain.

EARLY MORNING.

Book I. Song III.

By this had Chanticleer, the village cock,
Bidden the good-wife for her maids to knock ;
And the swart ploughman for his breakfast staid,
That he might till those lands were fallow laid;
The hills and valleys here and there resound
With re-echoes of the deep-mouthed hound;
Each shepherd's daughter with her cleanly pail
Was come a-field to milk the morning's meal.
And, ere the sun had climbed the eastern hills
To gild the muttering burns 1 and pretty rills,
Before the labouring bee had left the hive,
And nimble fishes which in rivers dive
Began to leap and catch the drownèd fly,
I rose from rest.

THE SQUIRREL HUNT.

Book I. Song IV.

Then, as a nimble squirrel from the wood,
Ranging the hedges for his filbert food,
Sits partly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking,
Till, with their crooks and bags, a sort3 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 quagmire and red water-plashes
The boys run dabbling thorough thick and thin:
One tears his hose, another breaks his shin;
This, torn and tattered, hath with much ado
Got by the briars, 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,
The little fool, with no small sport, they follow;
Whilst he, from tree to tree, from spray to spray,
Gets to the wood and hides him in his dray.

Book I. Song V.

MONA.

Here waxed the winds dumb, shut up in their caves; As still as midnight were the sullen waves;

And Neptune's silver ever-shaking breast
As smooth as when the halcyon builds her nest.
None other wrinkles on his face were seen
Than on a fertile mead or sportive green. . . .
The whistling reeds upon the water's side
Shot up their sharp heads in a stately pride;
And not a binding ozier bowed his head,
But on his root him bravely carrièd.

No dandling leaf played with the subtle air,
So smooth the sea was, and the sky so fair.

Now, with his hands instead of broad-palmed oars,
The swain attempts to get the shell-strewed shores,
And, with continual lading making a way,
Thrusts the small boat into as fair a bay
As ever merchant wished might be the road
Wherein to ease his sea-torn vessel's load:
It was an island, hugged in Neptune's arms. . .
And Mona hight.
Book II. Song I.

THE GOLDEN AGE.

Happier those times were when the flaxen clue
By fair Arachne's hand the Lydians knew,
And sought not to the worm for silken threads
To roll their bodies in or dress their heads;
When wise Minerva did the Athenians learn
To draw their milk-white fleeces into yarn. . . .
Through the wide seas no winged pine did go
To lands unknown for staining indigo,

Nor men in scorching climates moored their keel
To traffic for the costly cochineal :

Unknown was then the Phrygian broidery,

The Tyrian purple, and the scarlet dye :

Such as their sheep clad, such they wove and wore—

Russet or white, or those mixed, and no more—

Except sometimes, to bravery inclined,

Then dyed them yellow caps with alder rind.

The Grecian mantle, Tuscan robes of state,
Tissue, nor cloth of gold of highest rate,

They never saw: only in pleasant woods,
Or by the embroidered margin of the floods,
The dainty Nymphs they often did behold
Clad in their light silk robes stitcht oft with gold.
Green boughs of trees, with fattening acorns lade,1
Hung full with flowers and garlands quaintly made,
Their homely cots decked trim in low degree,-
As, now, the Court with richest tapestry.
Instead of cushions wrought, in windows lain,
They picked the cockle from their fields of grain ; .
The daisy, scattered on each mead and down,
A golden tuft within a silver crown

(Fair fall that dainty flower! and may there be
No shepherd graced that doth not honour thee!);
The primrose, when with six leaves gotten grace
Maids as a true-love in their bosoms place;
The spotless lily, by whose pure leaves be
Noted the chaste thoughts of virginity;
Carnations sweet with colour like the fire,
The fit impresa for enflamed desire;
The hare-bell, for the stainless azure hue
Claims to be worn of none but those are true;

The rose, like ready youth enticing stands,

And would be cropped if it might choose the hands; The yellow king-cup Flora them assigned

To be the badges of a jealous mind;

The orange-tawny marigold,—the night

Hides not her colours from a searching sight; .
The pansy; thistle, all with prickles set;

The cowslip, honeysuckle, violet,

And many hundreds more that graced the meads, Gardens, and groves, where beauteous Flora treads, Were by the shepherds' daughters (as yet are

Used2 in our cots) brought home with special care.
As is the rainbow's many-coloured hue,

Here see we watchet deepened with a blue,
There a dark tawny with a purple mixed,
Yellow and flame, with streaks of green betwixt,
A bloody stream into a blushing run,

And end still with the colour which begun..

With such rare art each mingleth with his fellow, The blue with watchet, green and red with yellow. Like to the changes which we daily see

About the dove's neck with variety,

Where none can say, though he it strict attends,
Here one begins and there the other ends :
So did the maidens with their various flowers
Deck up their windows and make neat their bowers;
Using such cunning as they did dispose
The ruddy peony with the lighter rose,

The monk's-hood with the bugloss, and entwine
The white, the blue, the flesh-like columbine
With pinks, sweet-williams; that, far off, the eye
Could not the manner of their mixtures spy.
Then, with those flowers they most of all did prize,
With all their skill and in most curious wise
On tufts of herbs or rushes, would they frame
A dainty border round the shepherd's name;
Or posies make, so quaint, so apt, so rare,
As if the Muses only livèd there,

And that the after-world should strive in vain
What they then did to counterfeit again.
Nor will the needle nor the loom e'er be
So perfect in their best embroidery,

Nor such composures made of silk and gold
As theirs, when Nature all her cunning told.
Book II. Song III.

ROBERT HERRICK.

(1591-1660.)

ROBERT HERRICK was descended from an ancient Leicestershire family which called itself Eyrick. He was the son of a goldsmith in Cheapside; obtained the degree of M.A. at Cambridge in 1620; and became, in 1629, vicar of Deanbourn in Devonshire. He was ejected by the Puritan government in 1648, and, taking up his residence in London, assumed the lay habit and applied himself to literary pursuits. During the twenty years of his vicarship he had produced a large number of love-verses, songs, and epigrams, specimens of which had been printed from time to time in London. In 1648 these were collected and published in a thick octavo, with a dedication to the Prince of Wales. The contents were arranged under the two heads of Hesperides and Noble Numbers. Herrick ranks as one of our chief lyric writers.

He had a marvellously musical ear, and some of his metres are among the most exquisite in our language. His joyous outbursts of song and love, and his verses to flowers, tearful and tender, are masterpieces of expression. At the same time it must be owned that a large portion of his poetry is mere doggrel. The volume appears to have been made up of every scrap he could gather of his writings, good and bad. He said of his own book;

I write of hell, I sing-and ever shall—

Of heaven, and hope to have it after all.

And, if ever poet won heaven for a song, Herrick is there.

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF THEIR TIME.

Gather rose-buds while ye may :

Old Time is still a-flying,

And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.