SISTER, AWAKE From Thomas Bateson's "First Set of English Madrigals," 1604 Sister, awake! close not your eyes, The Day her light discloses, And the bright Morning doth arise See, the clear Sun, the world's bright eye, In at our window peeping; Lo! how he blusheth to espy Us idle wenches sleeping. Therefore, awake! make haste, I say, And let us, without staying, All in our gowns of green so gay, Anon FEATHERS There falls with every wedding chime Walter Savage Landor PHILLIDA AND CORYDON In the merrie moneth of Maye, Where anon by a wood side, Phillida and Corydon. Much adoe there was, God wot; He sayde hee had lovde her longe; She sayes maids must kisse no men, Tyll they doe for good and all, Then with many a prettie othe, When they will not love abuse. Love, that had bene long deluded, Nicholas Breton GIVE ME MORE LOVE OR MORE DISDAIN Give me more love or more disdain; The torrid or the frozen zone Give me a storm; if it be love, Disdain, that torrent will devour Thomas Carew THE ROSARY The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, Oh memories that bless and burn! Oh barren gain and bitter loss! I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross, Sweetheart, To kiss the cross. Robert Cameron Rogers UNDER THE LINDENS Under the lindens lately sat I saw four eyes and four lips meet, I pondered long and could not tell Under the lindens? Walter Savage Landor TO A FAIR MAIDEN Fair maiden! when I look at thee Walter Savage Landor Browning EPILOGUE TO ASOLANDO At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time When you set your fancies free, Will they pass to where- by death, fools think, imprison'd Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so, Pity me? Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken! What had I on earth to do With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly? Being - who? One who never turn'd his back but march'd breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break, Never dream'd, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake. No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed, - fight on, fare ever There as here!" Robert Browning |