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CXXXV.

O Care! thou wilt dispatch me,
If Music do not match thee:
So deadly thou dost sting me,
Mirth only help can bring me.

Hence, Care, thou art too cruel!
Come, Music, sick man's jewel.
His force had well nigh slain me,
But thou must now sustain me.

Fa la.

Fa la.

"Music, mirth, and merry company are," according to Burton, "amongst the most special remedies for Melancholy. Musica est mentis medicina mæstæ, a roaring-meg "against Melancholy, to rear and revive the languishing "soul; affecting not only the ears, but the very arteries, "the vital and animal spirits. Be it instrumental, vocal, "with strings or wind, it cures all irksomeness or heaviness "of the mind."

CXXXVI.

Why are you, ladies, staying,
And your lords gone a Maying?
Run, run apace and meet them,
And with your garlands greet them;
'T were pity they should miss you,
For they will sweetly kiss you.

Hark, hark, I hear some dancing,
And a nimble Morris prancing.

The bagpipe and the Morris-bells

That they are not far hence, us tells.

Come let us all go thither,

And dance like friends together.

For a description of May sports and Morris-dancing, see Nos. CCCXLIII. and LXXIV.

CXXXVII.

Lady, the birds right fairly
Are singing ever early :

The Lark, the Thrush, the Nightingale,
The make-sport Cuckoo and the Quail;
These sing of Love; then why sleep ye?
To love your sleep it may not be.

In the same year (1600) he published a set of ten " Madrigals of six parts, apt for the viols and voices," inscribed to "the right noble-minded, and most virtuous gentleman, "Maister George Brooke, Esquier." The dedication contains nothing worthy of notice.

CXXXVIII.

Like two proud armies marching in the field,
Joining a thund'ring fight—each scorns to yield.
So in my heart, your beauty and my reason:
One claims the crown, the other says 't is treason.
But, oh! your beauty shineth as the sun;
And dazzled reason yields as quite undone.

CXXXIX.

When Thoralis delights to walk,
The Fairies do attend her.
They sweetly sing, and sweetly talk,
And sweetly do commend her.

The Satyrs leap, and dance the round,
And make their congés* to the ground;
And evermore their song it is,

Long may'st thou live, fair Thoralis.

It is not at all improbable that Queen Elizabeth is here eulogized under the name of Thoralis, for she had as many aliases as an Old Bailey convict. The poetry is a mere variation of the strains in Il Trionfo di Dori and The Triumphs of Oriana.

CXL.

Three times a day my prayer is,
To gaze my fill on Thoralis;
And three times thrice I daily pray
Not to offend that sacred Mayt.
But all the year my suit must be,
That I may please, and she love me.

*Reverential salutations.

+ Maid.

CXLI.

Mars in a fury 'gainst Love's brightest Queen,
Put on his helm, and took him to his lance:
And marching to the mount, this god was seen,
And to the foe his ensigns did advance.
And by Heav'ns greatest gates he stoutly swore,
Venus should die, for she had wrong'd him sore.

From a work by Robert Green, (who died 1592,) called Ciceronis Amor. There are three stanzas more, describing how Venus put on all her smiles and looked so beautiful, that Mars for fear threw all his armour down, and vowed never to be so angry again.

CXLII.

Thule, the period of cosmography,

Doth vaunt of Hecla; whose sulphureous fire Doth melt the frozen clime, and thaw the sky; Trinacrian Ætna's flames ascend not higher.

These things seem wondrous-yet more wondrous I, Whose heart with fear doth freeze, with love doth fry†.

The Andelusian merchant that returns,

Laden with cochineal and China dishes; Reports in Spain how strangely Fogot burns,

Amidst an ocean full of flying fishes.

These things seem wondrous,-yet more wondrous I, Whose heart with fear doth freeze, with love doth fry.

*Iceland, the Ultima Thule of the ancients.

+ Greybeard, thy love doth freeze

- but thine doth fry.-Taming of the Shrew, act ii.

Tierra del Fuego.

This is a splendid specimen of what the author of the Rejected Addresses would denominate Pathos and Bathos delightful to see. If so many hard words and so much geographical lore were to be introduced in a song of the present day, ladies and gentlemen would be obliged to carry about with them to public concerts a pocket edition of Johnson's Dictionary, and Brookes's Gazetteer.

The second stanza refers to the wonderful stories related by the Spanish navigators, of what they saw in doubling Cape Horn, or passing through the Straits of Magellan ; "in which place to the southward" (says one Mr. T. Lodge, who made a voyage to these parts with Cavendish,) "many "wondrous isles, many strange fishes, many monstrous

tr

Patagonnes withdrew my senses." To be in possession of China dishes at this period was no doubt considered a mark of opulence. The Clown, in Measure for Measure, describing a fruit dish, says "Your honours have seen such “dishes, a dish of some three-pence: they are not China "dishes, but very good dishes."

CXLIII.

A Sparrow-hawk proud did hold in wicked jail,
Music's sweet chorister, the Nightingale.

To whom with sighs she said, Oh, set me free!
And in my song I'll praise no bird but thee.
The Hawk replied, I will not lose my diet,

To let a thousand such enjoy their quiet.

This Sparrow-hawk is only to be matched in cruelty by the sanguinary wolf in Little Red Riding-hood.