What life were love, if love were free from pain? But oh that pain with pleasure matched should meet!

Why did the course of nature so ordain

That sugared sour must sauce the bitter sweet? Which sour from sweet might any means remove, What hap, what heaven, what life, were like to love!

XXVI.

THE SHEPHERD'S PRAISE OF HIS
SACRED DIANA.1

Before 1593.)

RAISED be Diana's fair and harmless light;

Praised be the dews wherewith she moists the ground;

Praised be her beams, the glory of the night; Praised be her power, by which all powers abound.

Praised be her nymphs, with whom she decks the woods;

Praised be her knights, in whom true honour lives;

1 In "England's Helicon," 1600, Raleigh's initials were first affixed, but were obliterated by pasting over them a slip of paper with the word "Ignoto." The piece is marked "W. R." in F. Davison's catalogue of the poems contained in " 'England's Helicon," Harl. MS. 280, fol. 99. It is anonymous in the "Phonix Nest," 1593, p. 69.

Praised be that force, by which she moves the floods;
Let that Diana shine which all these gives.
In heaven queen she is among the spheres;
She mistress-like makes all things to be pure;
Eternity in her oft change she bears;

She beauty is; by her the fair endure.

Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide;
Mortality below her orb is placed;

By her the virtues of the stars down slide;
In her is virtue's perfect image cast.

A knowledge pure it is her worth to know:
With Circes let them dwell that think not so.
[S. W. R.] IGNOTO.

XXVII.

THE SHEPHERD'S DESCRIPTION OF

LOVE.1

(Before 1600.)

Melibaus.

HEPHERD, what's love, I pray thee

tell?

Fau. It is that fountain and that
well

Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
It is perhaps that sauncing bell

In "England's Helicon," 1600, with the first signature obliterated, as in No. xxvi., and ascribed to "S. W. Rawly" in F. Davison's list, Harl. MS. 280, fol. 99.

It is

That tolls all into heaven or hell;
And this is love as I heard tell.
Meli. Yet what is love, I prithee say?
Fau. It is a work on holiday;

It is December matched with May,
When lusty bloods, in fresh array,

Hear ten months after of the play;
And this is love as I hear say.

Meli. Yet what is love, good shepherd, sain?
Fau. It is a sunshine mixed with rain;
It is a tooth-ache, or like pain;

It is a game where none doth gain;
The lass saith no, and would full fain ;
And this is love, as I hear sain.

Meli. Yet, shepherd, what is love, I pray?
Fau. It is a yea, it is a nay,

A pretty kind of sporting fray;

It is a thing will soon away;

Then, nymphs, take 'vantage while ye may;
And this is love, as I hear say.

Meli. Yet what is love, good shepherd, show?
Fau. A thing that creeps; it cannot go ;
A prize that passeth to and fro;

A thing for one, a thing for moe;

And he that proves shall find it so ;
And, shepherd, this is love, I trow.
[S. W. R.] IGNOTO.

anonymous in Davison's "Poetical Rhapsody," 1602, &c., as "The Anatomy of Love," with no distinction of dialogue, and the first line running, "Now what love, I pray thee tell?" An imperfect copy of the first and last stanzas form "the third song" in T. Heywood's "Rape of Lucrece," 1608, &c.

XXVIII.

AS YOU CAME FROM THE
HOLY LAND.1

S you came from the holy land
Of Walsinghame,

Met you not with my true love
By the way as you came?

How shall I know your true love,
That have met many one,

As I went to the holy land,

That have come, that have gone?

She is neither white nor brown,
But as the heavens fair;
There is none hath a form so divine
In the earth or the air.

Such a one did I meet, good sir,
Such an angelic face,

Who like a queen, like a nymph, did appear,
By her gate, by her grace.

MS. Rawl. 85, fol. 124; signed as infra, and hence claimed for Raleigh by Dr. Bliss, Wood's "A. O.," vol. ii., p. 248, and inserted in the Oxford edition of Raleigh's "Works," vol. viii. p. 733, with the title "False Love and True Love." There is an anonymous copy in Percy's MS., vol. iii., p. 465, ed. Furnivall: and it is also in Deloney's "Garland of Goodwill," p. 111, Percy Society reprint.

She hath left me here all alone,

All alone, as unknown,

Who sometimes did me lead with herself, And me loved as her own.

What's the cause that she leaves you alone,
And a new way doth take,

Who loved you once as her own,
And her joy did you make?

I have loved her all my youth,
But now old, as you see:
Love likes not the falling fruit
From the withered tree.

Know that Love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past;
He is blind, he is deaf when he list,
And in faith never fast.

His desire is a dureless content,
And a trustless joy;

He is won with a world of despair,
And is lost with a toy.

Of womenkind such indeed is the love,
Or the word love abused,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excused.

But true love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning,

Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.

SR. W. R.

G