And boast that your luck you help with design,
By praying cross-legged to Old Bishop Valentine.
Hark, hark! a prize is drawn, and trumpets sound!
Tan, ta, ra, ra, ra!

Tan, ta, ra, ra, ra !

Hark maids! more lots are drawn! prizes abound.
Dub! dub a, dub a, dub! the drum now beats!
And, dub a, dub a, dub, echo repeats;

As if at night the god of war had made
Love's queen a skirmish for a serenade.

Haste, haste, fair maids, and come away!
The priest attends, your bridegrooms stay.

Roses and pinks will be strewn where you go;
Whilst I walk in shades of willow, willow.

When I am dead let him that did stay me
Be but so good as kindly to lay me
There where neglected lovers mourn,
Where lamps and hallowed tapers burn,
Where clerks in quires sad dirges sing,
Where sweetly bells at burials ring.

My rose of youth is gone
Withered as soon as blown!
Lovers go ring my knell!
Beauty and love farewell!
And lest virgins forsaken
Should, perhaps, be mistaken

In seeking my grave, alas! let them know
I lie near a shade of willow, willow.

THE COQUET.

'TIS, in good truth, a most wonderful thing
(I am even ashamed to relate it)

That love so many vexations should bring,
And yet few have the wit to hate it.

Love's weather in maids should seldom hold fair:

Like April's mine shall quickly alter;

I'll give him to-night a lock of my hair,
To whom next day I'll send a halter.
I cannot abide these malapert males,
Pirates of love, who know no duty;

Yet love with a storm can take down their sails,
And they must strike to Admiral Beauty.
Farewell to that maid who will be undone,
Who in markets of men (where plenty
Is cried up and down) will die even for one;
I will live to make fools of twenty.

THE LAW AGAINST LOVERS.

LOVE PROSCRIBED.

WAKE all the dead! what ho! what ho!

How soundly they sleep whose pillows lie low?

They mind not poor lovers who walk above
On the decks of the world in storms of love.
No whisper now nor glance shall pass

Through wickets or through panes of glass;
For our windows and doors are shut and barred.
Lie close in the church, and in the churchyard.
In every grave make room, make room!

The world's at an end, and we come, we come.
The state is now love's foe, love's foe;
Has seized on his arms, his quiver and bow;
Has pinioned his wings, and fettered his feet,
Because he made way for lovers to meet.

But O sad chance, his judge was old;

Hearts cruel grown, when blood grows cold. No man being young, his process would draw. O heavens that love should be subject to law! Lovers go woo the dead, the dead!

Lie two in a grave, and to bed, to bed!

THE MAN'S THE MASTER.

A DRINKING ROUND.

THE bread is all baked,
The embers are raked;

'Tis midnight now by chanticleer's first crowing;
Let's kindly carouse

Whilst 'top of the house

The cats fall out in the heat of their wooing.
Time, whilst thy hour-glass does run out,
This flowing glass shall go about.

Stay, stay, the nurse is waked, the child does cry,
No song so ancient is as lulla-by.

The cradle's rocked, the child is hushed again,
Then hey for the maids, and ho for the men.
Now every one advance his glass;
Then all at once together clash;
Experienced lovers know

This clashing does but shew,

That, as in music, so in love must be

Some discord to make up a harmony.

Sing, sing! When crickets sing why should not we?

The crickets were merry before us;
They sung us thanks ere we made them a fire.
They taught us to sing in a chorus:

The chimney's their church, the oven their quire.
Once more the cock cries cock-a-doodle-doo.
The owl cries o'er the barn, to-whit-to-whoo!
Benighted travellers now lose their way
Whom Will-of-the-wisp bewitches:
About and about he leads them astray
Through bogs, through hedges, and ditches.
Hark! hark! the cloister bell is rung!
Alas! the midnight dirge is sung.

Let 'em ring,

Let 'em sing,

Whilst we spend the night in love and in laughter. When night is gone,

O then too soon

The discords and cares of the day come after.

Come boys! a health, a health, a double health
To those who 'scape from care by shunning wealth.
Dispatch it away
Before it be day,

"Twill quickly grow early when it is late:
A health to thee,

To him, to me,

To all who beauty love, and business hate.

THE CRUEL BROTHER.

GRIEVE NOT FOR THE PAST.

EEP no more for what is past,

WEB

For time in motion makes such haste

He hath no leisure to descry

Those errors which he passeth by.

If we consider accident,

It

And how repugnant unto sense
pays desert with bad event,
We shall disparage Providence.

GERVASE MARKHAM AND WILLIAM

SAMPSON.

[THESE writers belong to the time of Charles I., in whose service Markham bore a captain's commission. He was a writer of some authority in his day on agriculture and husbandry. Of Sampson nothing is known except that he was the author of two plays, and assisted Markham in the piece from which the following song is taken.]

HEROD AND ANTIPATER.

SIMPLES TO SELL.

COME will you buy? for I have here

The rarest gums that ever were;
Gold is but dross, and features die,
Else Esculapius tells a lie.
But I,

Come will you buy?

Have medicines for that malady.

Is there a lady in this place,
Would not be masked, but for her face?
O do not blush, for here is that

Will make your pale cheeks plump and fat.
Then why

Should I thus cry,

And none a scruple of me buy?

Come buy, you lusty gallants,

These simples which I sell;

In all your days were never seen like these,
For beauty, strength, and smell.

Here's the king-cup, the pansy with the violet,

The rose that loves the shower,

The wholesome gilliflower,

Both the cowslip, lily,

And the daffodilly,

With a thousand in my power.

Here's golden amaranthus,

That true love can provoke,

Of horehound store, and poisoning helebore,

With the polipode of the oak;

Here's chaste vervine, and lustful eringo,
Health preserving sage,

And rue which cures old age,
With a world of others,

Making fruitful mothers;

All these attend me as my page.