Tell mee all yee shepheards swaines,
On Mineruas Mountaine plaines:
Yee that onely sit and keepe
Flockes (but of the fairest sheepe)
Did you see this blessed day,
Faire Aglaia walke this way?
If yee did oh tell me then,
If yee bee true meaning men:
How shee fareth with her health,
All the world of all your wealth:
Say a truth, and say no more:
Did yee euer see before
Such a shepherdesse as shee?
Can there such another bee?
Euer did your eies beholde,
Pearles, or pretious stones in golde
Or the Starres in Phaebus skies,

Past 3.

Who can liue in heart so glad
As the merrie countrie lad?
Who vpon a faire greene balke
May at pleasures sit and walke?
And amidde the Azure skies,
See the morning Sunne arise?
While hee heares in euery spring,
How the Birdes doe chirpe and sing:
Or, before the houndes in crie
See the Hare goe stealing by:
Or along the shallow brooke.
Angling with a baited hooke:
See the fishes leape and play
In a blessed Sunny day:
Or to heare the Partridge call
Till shee haue her Couye all:
Or to see the subtill foxe,

Live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
And all the craggy mountains yields.

There will we sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, by whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee a bed of roses,
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;

Whenas thine eye hath chose the dame
And stalled the deer that thou shouldst strike,
Let reason rule things worthy blame
As well as fancy, partial might.
— Take counsel of some wiser head,
— Neither too young nor yet unwed,

And when thou com'st thy tale to tell,
Smooth not thy tongue with filed talk
Lest she some subtle practice smell:
A cripple soon can find a halt.
— But plainly say thou lov'st her well,
— And set her person forth to sale,

And to her will frame all thy ways.
Spare not to spend, and chiefly there

My flocks feed not, my ewes breed not,
— My rams speed not, all is amiss.
Love is dying, faith's defying,
— Heart's denying causer of this.
All my merry jigs are quite forgot,
All my lady's love is lost, God wot.
Where her faith was firmly fixed in love,
There a nay is placed without remove.
— One seely cross wrought all my loss —
— O frowning fortune, cursed fickle dame!
— For now I see inconstancy
— More in women than in men remain.

In black mourn I, all fears scorn I,
— Love hath forlorn me, living in thrall.

On a day, alack the day!
Love, whose month was ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair,
Playing in the wanton air:
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish'd himself the heaven's breath,
" Air," quoth he, " thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alas! my hand hath sworn
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:
Vow, alack! for youth unmeet:
Youth, so apt to pluck a sweet.
Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiope were;

Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east!
My heart doth charge the watch; the morning rise
Doth cite each moving sense from idle rest.
Not daring trust the office of mine eyes,
While Philomela sits and sings, I sit and mark,
And wish her lays were tuned like the lark;

For she doth welcome daylight with her ditty,
And drives away dark dismal-dreaming night:
The night so pack'd, I post unto my pretty;
Heart hath his hope, and eyes their wished sight;
Sorrow changed to solace, solace mix'd with sorrow;

Good night, good rest — ah, neither be my share.
She bade good night that kept my rest away,
And daffed me to a cabin hanged with care
To descant on the doubts of my decay.
— " Farewell," quoth she, " and come again tomorrow."
— Fare well I could not, for I supped with sorrow.

Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile,
In scorn or friendship nill I conster whether.
'Tmay be she joyed to jest at my exile,
'Tmay be, again to make me wander thither.
— " Wander" — a word for shadows like myself,

Venus, with young Adonis sitting by her
Under a myrtle shade, began to woo him:
She told the youngling how god Mars did try her,
And as he fell to her, so fell she to him.
" Even thus," quoth she, " the warlike god embraced me,"
And then she clipp'd Adonis in her arms;
" Even thus," quoth she, " the warlike god unlaced me,"
As if the boy should use like loving charms;
" Even thus," quoth she, " he seized on my lips,"
And with her lips on his did act the seizure:
And as she fetched breath, away he skips,

Fair was the morn when the fair queen of love,

Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove,
For Adon's sake, a youngster proud and wild,
Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill.
Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds.
She, seely queen, with more than love's good will
Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds.
" Once," quoth she, " did I see a fair sweet youth
Here in these brakes deep-wounded with a boar,
Deep in the thigh, a spectacle of ruth.
See in my thigh," quoth she, " here was the sore."