Three from Read & Dobrée I

Three poems from The London Book of English Verse.

A Fancy

First shall the heavens want starry light,
   The seas be robbed of their waves;
The day want sun, and sun want bright,
The night want shade, the dead men graves;
      The April flowers and leaf and tree,
      Before I false my faith to thee.

First shall the tops of highest hills
   By humble plains be overpried;
And poets scorn the Muses' quills,
   And fish forsake the water-glide,
      And Iris lose her coloured weed,
      Before I fail thee at thy need.

First direful hate shall turn to peace,
   And love relent in deep disdain;
And death his fatal stroke shall cease,
   And envy pity every pain,
      And pleasure mourn, and sorrow smile
      Before I talk of any guile.

First time shall stay his stayless race,
   And winter bless his brows with corn,
And snow bemoisten July's face,
   And winter spring, and summer mourn,
      Before my pen by help of fame
      Cease to recite thy sacred name.

Thomas Lodge

The Soote Season

The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale.
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete with new repaired scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings,
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
   And thus I see among these pleasant things
   Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs!

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

The Nightingale

The nightingale, as soon as April bringeth
   Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,
While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth,
   Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making,
   And mournfully bewailing,
Her throat in tunes expresseth
What grief her breast oppresseth,
   For Tereus' force on her chaste will prevailing.
O Philomela fair, O take some gladness,
That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness:
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;
Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.

Alas, she hath no other cause of anguish
   But Tereus' love, on her by strong hand wroken,
Wherein she suffering, all her spirits languish,
   Full womanlike complains her will was broken.
   But I, who daily craving,
Cannot have to content me,
Have more cause to lament me,
   Since wanting is more woe than too much having.
O Philomela fair, O take some gladness,
That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness:
Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;
Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.

Sir Philip Sidney

The London Book of English Verse (1949), ed. Herbert Read and Bonamy Dobrée, ## 93, 157, 209; pp. 108, 165, 195.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 04/17/05 11:26:08 AM
Categorized as Literary & Sunday Poetry Series.