SIGH NO MORE, LADIES.

[From Much Ado about Nothing.]

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never :
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.

Sing no more ditties, sing no moe,
Of dumps so dull and heavy ;
The fraud of men was ever so,
Since summer first was leafy :
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into Hey nonny, nonny.

A LOVER'S LAMENT.

[From Twelfth Night.]

Come away, come away, death,

And in sad cypress let me be laid;

Fly away, fly away, breath;

I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, O, prepare it!

My part of death, no one so true

Did share it.

Not a flower, not a flower sweet,

On my black coffin let there be strown;

Not a friend, not a friend greet

My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown : A thousand thousand sighs to save,

Lay me, O, where

Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!

ARIEL'S SONG.

[From The Tempest.]

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie:

There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

A SEA DIRGE.

[From The Tempest.]

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell :

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them,-Ding-dong, bell

IN THE GREENWOOD.

[From As You Like It.]

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i' the sun,
Seeking the food he eats

And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

VOL. I.

WINTER.

[From Love's Labour's Lost.]

When icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall

And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit;

Tu-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow
And coughing drowns the parson's saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
H h

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
Tu-whit ;

Tu-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

SONG OF AUTOLYCUS.

[From The Winter's Tale.]

When daffodils begin to peer,

With heigh the doxy over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge,

With heigh the sweet birds, O, how they sing! Doth set my pugging tooth on edge;

For a quart of ale is a dish for a king.

The lark, that tirra-lyra chants,

With heigh! with heigh! the thrush and the jay,
Are summer songs for me and my aunts,
While we lie tumbling in the hay.

But shall I go mourn for that, my dear?
The pale moon shines by night :
And when I wander here and there,
I then do most go right.

If tinkers may have leave to live,
And bear the sow-skin budget,
Then my account I well may give,
And in the stocks avouch it.

Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a :
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.

SAMUEL DANIEL.

[SAMUEL DANIEL was born near Taunton in 1562. He died at Beckington in the county of his birth in 1619. His chief works were―The Complaint of Rosamond, 1594; Cleopatra, 1594; Epistles to Various Great Personages, 1601; The Civil Wars, 1604; Philotas, 1611; Hymen's Triumph, 1623; A Defence of Rhyme, 1611.]

There are few poets, not of the first class, to whose merits a stronger consensus of weighty opinion can be produced than that which attests the value of Samuel Daniel's work. His contemporaries, while expressing some doubts as to his choice of subjects, speak of him as 'well-languaged,'' sharp-conceited,' and as a master of pure English. The critics of the eighteenth century were surprised to find in him so little that they could deem obsolete or in bad taste. The more catholic censorship of Hazlitt, Lamb, and Coleridge was delighted with his extraordinary felicity of expression, and the simple grace of his imagery and phrase. There can be no doubt however that his choice of historical subjects for his poetry was unfortunate for his fame. The sentence of Joubert is not likely to be reversed: 'Il faut que son sujet offre au génie du poëte une espèce de lieu fantastique qu'il puisse étendre et resserrer à volonté. Un lieu trop réel, une population trop historique emprisonnent l'esprit et en gênent les mouvements.' This holds true of all the Elizabethan historians; and it holds truer perhaps of Daniel than of Drayton. For the genius of the former had a tender and delicate quality about it which was least of all applicable to such work, and seems to have lacked altogether the faculty of narrative. Daniel's one qualification for the task was his power of dignified moral reflection, in which, as the following extracts will show, he has hardly a superior. This however, though an admirable adjunct to the other qualities required for the task, could by no means compensate for their absence; and the result is that the History of the Civil Wars is with difficulty readable. The Complaint of Rosamond is better.