"Ring Out, Wild Bells" from "In Memoriam"... Tennyson

The Song from "Pippa Passes".

"Cavalier Tunes".

"The Ivy Green".

"Home, Sweet Home".

"The Old Oaken Bucket".

"The Bridge"...

"The Day is Done".

"The Curfew"..

"Hushabye, Sweet, My Own".

James Whitcomb Riley

Eugene Field

. Eugene Field

"Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" (Dutch Lullaby).. Eugene Field

"Old Folks at Home"..

"My Old Kentucky Home"

"On the Road to Mandalay”.

Songs from "Drake"..

Stephen C. Foster
Stephen C. Foster
Kipling
Alfred Noyes

"Men Who March Away" (September, 1914)... Thomas Hardy

SOME OF THE BEST-KNOWN SACRED SONGS

"The Spacious Firmament on High”.....

"While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by

Night"

. Joseph Addison

Nahum Tate, 1702

1 For published airs for songs in The Golden Treasury, see list by Miss Jeanette F. Abrams, The English Journal, p. 387, June, 1915.

CHAPTER V

THE SIMPLE LYRIC

Under the heading, simple lyric, are placed all of those lyrical poems that do not properly belong under any of the other types of lyrics. With the possible exception of the song, more poems are included in this class than in any other in the whole field of literature. The simple lyric touches every mood and emotion of the human heart. These poems are found in every period of English literature, from that of the Anglo-Saxons to the present day, but only a few of them can be given here.

THE COMPLAINT TO HIS EMPTY PURSE

Chaucer, 1399

To you, my purs, and to non other wight 1
Campleyne I, for ye be my lady dere!
I am so sory, now that ye be light;
For certes, but 2 ye make me hevy chere,3
Me were as leef be leyd upon my bere;
For whiche unto your mercy thus I crye:
Beth hevy ageyn, or elles mot I dye!

4

hit be night,

Now vouchethsauf" this day, or
That I of you the blisful soun may here,
Or see your colour lyk the sonne bright,
That of yelownesse hadde never pere.
Ye be my lyf, ye be myn hertes stere,"
Quene of comfort and of good companye,
Beth hevy ageyn, or elles mot I dye!

Now purs, that be to me my lyves light,
And saveour, as down in this worlde here,

Out of this toune help me through your might,

Sin that ye wole nat ben my tresorere:

For I am shave as nye as any frere.

7 ere. 8 an equal. 9 guide.

5

10

15

But yit I pray unto your curtesye:

Beth hevy ageyn, or elles mot I dye!

SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS

20

What does Chaucer mean by being "Shaven as close as any friar"? What is the mood of this poem? See story of Chaucer's life for the causes and results of this poem. Try putting this into modern English prose.

Does it gain or lose anything by the change?

L'ALLEGRO

John Milton

Hence, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn,

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell,

5

Where brooding darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;

There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,

And by men, heart-easing Mirth,
Whom lovely Venus at a birth

10

15

20

25

30

And in thy right hand lead with thee
The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty;
And if I give thee honor due,
Mirth, admit me of thy crew,
To live with her, and live with thee,
In unreprovèd pleasures free;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And, singing, startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise;
Then to come, in spite of sorrow,
And at my window bid good-morrow,
Through the sweetbrier, or the vine,
Or the twisted eglantine;
While the cock, with lively din,

Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before:

Oft listening how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn,
From the side of some hoar hill,
Through the high wood echoing shrill:
Sometime walking, not unseen,
By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green,
Right against the eastern gate,
Where the great Sun begins his state,
Robed in flames and amber light,
The clouds in thousand liveries dight;
While the plowman, near at hand,
Whistles o'er the furrowed land,
And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,
Whilst the landskip round it measures:

Russet lawns, and fallows gray,

Where the nibbling flocks do stray;
Mountains on whose barren breast
The laboring clouds do often rest:
Meadows trim, with daisies pied;
Shallow brooks, and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,