The merle she sang: Hail Rose of most delight,
Hail of all flowers queen and sovereign:
The lark she sang: Hail Rose, both red and white,
Most pleasant flower, of mighty colours vain:
The nightingale sang: Hail Nature's suffragan,
In beauty, nurture, and every nobleness,
In rich array, renown, and gentleness.
The common voice uprose of birdis small,
Upon this ways, O blessed be the hour
That thou wast chosen to be our principal:
Welcome to be our princess of honour,
Our pearl, our pleasure, and our paramour,
Our peace, our play, our plain felicity,
Christ thee conserve from all adversitie.
O REVEREND Chaucer! rose of rhetoric all,
As in our tongue ane flower imperial,
That rose in Britain ever, who reads right
Thou bearst of Makaris the triumph royll;
Thy fresh enameled terms celestial,
This mater could illumined have full bright: Was thou not of our English all the light, Surmounting every tongue terrestrial,
As far as Mayis morrow does midnight.
O moral Gower! and Lydgate laureate !
Your sugaréd lips and tongués aureate,
Are to our ears the cause of great delight;
Your angel mouthis most mellifluate,
Our rude language has clear illuminate,
And fair o'ergilt our speech, that imperfyte
Stude, ere your golden pens were shaped to write;
This isle before was bare and desolate
Of rhetoric, or lusty fresh indyte.
Thou little Quair, be ever obedient,
Humble, subject, and simple of intent,
Before the face of every cunning wight:
I know what thou of rhetoric has spent ;
Of all her lusty roses redolent
Is none unto thy garland set on hight;
Eshame thereof, and draw thee out of sight!
Rude is thy garb, disclaimed, bare, and rent,
Well should thou be afeared of the light.
ALL EARTHLY JOY RETURNS IN PAIN.
OF Lentern in the first morning,
Early as did the day upspring,
Thus sang ane bird with voice upplain,
All earthly joy returns in pain.
O man! have mind that thou must pass;
Remember that thou art but ass,*
And shall to dust return again :
All earthly joy returns in pain.
Have mind that age aye follows youth,
Death follows life with gaping mouth,
Devouring fruit and flowering grain :
All earthly joy returns in pain.
Wealth, worldly glory, rich array,
Are all but thorns laid in thy way,
O'ercovered with flowers laid in a train :
All earthly joys return in pain.
Came never yet May so fresh and green,
But January came as wud and keen;
Was never such drout, but ance came rain
All earthly joy returns in pain.
Since earthly joy abydis never,
Work for the joy that lasts for ever;
For other joy is all but vain :
All earthly joy returns in pain.
THE STAR OF OUR REDEMPTION.
THE star is rissen of our redemption
In Bethlem, with beams blithe and bright; The Son of God in earth has shewen him boun, Among his angels with a glorious light,
As Heaven's Lord of majesty and might! Come, mortal kings, and fall on knees a-down
Before the king of grace, and life, and light: The star is rissen of our redemption.
Incline before the Christian conqueror,
Of every kith and kindred under sky;
The high Maker and the mighty Salvatour,
The meek Redeemer most to magnify;
With reverent fear down on your faces lie,
And on this day in his laudation,
AVE REDEMPTOR JESU! all ye cry:
The star is rissen of our redemption.
All follow we the star of most brightness,
With the three blissfull oriental kings,
The star of day, voider of darkness,
Above all stars, planets, spheres, and signs;
Beseeching Him, from whom all mercy springs,
Us to receive, with mirth of angels soon,
Into the heaven where the emperian rings:
The star is rissen of our redemption.
FROM THE PROLOGUE TO THE SEVENTH BOOK OF THE
THE time and season bitter, cold, and pale,
The shortened days that scholars call brumale;
When biting blasts of the fierce northern Arct
O'erwhelmed had Neptunus in his cart,
And all to shake the leavys off the trees,
The raging storms o'er-weltering wavy seas.
Rivers ran red on spate, with water brown,
And burns hurl madly all their bankis down;
And land-bursts rumbling rudely, with sic bere
As ne'er wild lion's roar, nor ravening bear.
The soil yswept into the water's wake,
The firmament o'ercast with cloudis black:
The ground faded, death weeded all the fields,
Mountain-tops sleekit with snow over hields.
On ragged rocks of hardest harsh whin-stane,
With frozen fronts cold flinty cliffs gat shene.
Beauty was lost; and barren showed the lands,
With frosts sharp hoar o'erfret the fieldis stands.
Sere bellowing blasts, and gusts wi' shoutis snell,
Seemed on the sward in similitude of hell;
Producing to our mind, in every shade
But ghastly shadows of eild and grisly dead.
FROM THE PROLOGUE TO THE TWELFTH BOOK OF THE
ENEID.
As fresh Aurore, of mighty Tithone spouse,
Forth of her saffron bed and ivory house,
In crammesy clad and grained violet,
With sanguine cape, the selvage purpurate;
Unshut the windows of her largé hall,
Spread all with roses full of balm royal;
And eke the heavenly portés chrystaline,
Unfold them braid, the world till illumine.
Forth of his palace-royal issuèd Phœbus,
With golden crown and visage glorious,
Crisp hairs, bright as chrysolite or topaz,
For whos clear hue might none behold his face,
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