They are the lords and owners of their No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I faces,

do change:

Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer
sweet,

Thy pyramids built up with newer might
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange;
They are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we
admire

Though to itself it only live and die;
But if that flower with base infection
meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

What thou dost foist upon us that is old;
And rather make them born to our desire,
Than think that we before have heard
them told.

Thy registers and thee I both defy,
Not wondering at the present nor the past;
For thy records and what we see do lie,
Made more or less by thy continual haste:

This I do vow, and this shall ever be,
I will be true, despite thy scythe and
thee.

BEN JONSON.

[1574-1637.]

THE NOBLE NATURE.

IT is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred
year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night,

It was the plant and flower of Light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures life may perfect be.

SONG OF HESPERUS.

QUEEN, and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep:

Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.

Earth, let not thy envious shade
Dare itself to interpose;
Cynthia's shining orb was made
Heaven to clear, when day did close:
Bless us then with wished sight,
Goddess excellently bright.

The moon shines bright, and the stars Lament, lament, old Abbeys,
give a light,
The fairies' lost command;
They did but change priests' babies,

A little before it is day;

So God bless you all, both great and

When any need to borrow aught,

We lend them what they do require:
And for the use demand we naught;
Our own is all we do desire.
If to repay
They do delay,

Abroad amongst them then I go,
And night by night,
I them affright,

With pinchings, dreams, and ho, ho,
ho!

When lazy queans have naught to do,
But study how to cog and lie;
To make debate and mischief too,
"Twixt one another secretly:

1 mark their gloze,

I get me gone,

And leave them scolding, ho, ho, ho!

And it disclose

The lady stood on her castle wa',
Beheld baith dale and down;

To them whom they have wronged so: There she was aware of a host of men

When I have done

Came riding towards the town.

By wells and rills, in meadows green,
We nightly dance our heyday guise;
And to our fairy king and queen,
We chant our moonlight minstrelsies.
When larks 'gin sing,
Away we fling;

And babes new-born steal as we go;
And elf in bed
We leave in stead,

And wend us laughing ho, ho, ho!

From hag-bred Merlin's time, have I

Thus nightly revelled to and fro;
And for my pranks men call me by
The name of Robin Goodfellow.
Fiends, ghosts, and sprites,
Who haunt the nights,

The hags and goblins do me know;
And beldames old

UNKNOWN.

My feats have told,

So vale, vale; ho, ho, ho!

[Before 1649.]

EDOM O' GORDON.

IT fell about the Martinmas,

When the wind blew shrill and cauld, Said Edom o' Gordon to his men, "We maun draw to a hauld.

"And whatna hauld sall we draw to,
My merry men and me?

We will gae to the house of the Rodes,
To see that fair ladye."