From you our swords take edge, our heart grows bold; From you in fee their lives your liegemen hold. These groves your kingdom, and our laws your will; That gives the power In which you may, Both night and day. Welcome, thrice welcome to this shady green, JOHN FORD. 1586-16-. [WHILE Massinger was fighting against the ills and mortifications of a precarious pursuit, his contemporary Ford, two years his junior, was persevering in the profession of the law, filling up his leisure hours with dramatic poetry, and making an independence, which at last enabled him to marry (if the pleasant tradition may be trusted), and to spend the last years of his life at ease in his native place. He was descended from a family long settled in the north of Devonshire, was born in Islington in 1586, and is supposed to have died about 1640. In the poem on the Times' Poets, already quoted, he is described in a characteristic couplet: 'Deep in a dump John Ford was alone got, Whether the melancholy hat' really conveys a faithful image of the character of the man is questionable, for in the roll of worthies enumerated by Heywood in his Hierarchy of Angels, we are told that he was always called by the familiar name of Jack Ford, which argues a more social and genial nature.] THE DRAMATISTS. 14 THE SUN'S DARLING.* 1623. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL. FA ANCIES are but streams They, who by their dreams Feasting starve, laughing weep, Hopes like wind, Idle hopes, beguiling. Thoughts fly away; Time hath passed them: WHA BIRDS' SONGS. HAT bird so sings, yet so does wail? Jugg, jugg, jugg, terue she cries, Ha, ha! hark, hark! the cuckoos sing Ha, ha! hark, hark! the cuckoos sing LIVE WITH ME. LIVE with me still, and all the measures, Played to by the spheres, I'll teach thee; Let's but thus dally, all the pleasures The moon beholds, her man shall reach thee. * In this play Ford was joined by Dekker. + Imitated from a song in Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe.-See ante, p. 50. 2 Dwell in mine arms, aloft we'll hover, THE DEATH OF SPRING. HERE lies the blithe Spring, Who first taught birds to sing; Yet in April herself fell a crying: Then May growing hot, A sweating sickness she got, And the first of June lay a-dying. Yet no month can say, But her merry daughter May Stuck her coffins with flowers great plenty: The cuckoo sung in verse An epitaph o'er her hearse, But assure you the lines were not dainty. SUMMER SPORTS. HAYMAKERS, rakers, reapers, Wait on your Summer-queen; and mowers, Dress up with musk-rose her eglantine bowers, Daffodils strew the green; Sing, dance, and play, 'Tis holiday; The Sun does bravely shine On our ears of corn. Rich as a pearl Comes every girl, This is mine, this is mine, this is mine; Let us die, ere away they be borne. Bow to the Sun, to our queen, and that fair one Each bonny lass here is counted a rare one, Will teach the woods to resound, Their bleating dams, 'Mongst kids shall trip it round; For joy thus our wenches we follow. Wind, jolly huntsmen, your neat bugles shrilly, Spring up, you falconers, the partridges freely, Over ridge, over plain, The dogs have the stag in chase: So ho ho! through the skies And sousing kills with a grace! DRINKING SONG. CAST away care; he that loves sorrow Lengthens not a day, nor can buy to-morrow; Wine is a charm, it heats the blood too, Quickens the wit, and makes the back able, Pots fly about, give us more liquor, Merrily, &c. Brothers of a rout, our brains will flow quicker; Empty the cask; score up, we care not; Fill all the pots again; drink on, and spare not. THE LOVER'S MELANCHOLY. FLY HENCE, SHADOWS! FLY hence, shadows, that do keep Merrily, &c. 1628. Watchful sorrows, charmed in sleep! Thoughts, chained up in busy snares Of continual woes and cares: THE BROKEN HEART. 1633. BEAUTY BEYOND THE REACH OF ART. CAN you paint a thought? or number Can you count soft minutes roving Sooner do both that and this, |