SONG TO APOLLO.

SING to Apollo, god of day,

Whose golden beams with morning play,

And make her eyes so brightly shine,

Aurora's face is called divine.

Sing to Phoebus and that throne
Of diamonds which he sets upon.
Io Peans let us sing

To Physic and to Poesy's king.

Crown all his altars with bright fire,
Laurels bind about his lyre,

A Daphnean coronet for his head,
The Muses dance about his bed;
When on his ravishing lute he plays,
Strew his temple round with bays.
Io Peans let us sing

To the glittering Delian king.

MOTHER BOMBIE. 1598.

BACCHANALIAN SONG.

Bacchus! To thy table

Thou callest every drunken rabble;
We already are stiff drinkers,
Then seal us for thy jolly skinkers.*
Wine, O wine!

O juice divine!

How dost thou the nowlet refine.
Plump thou makest men's ruby faces,
And from girls can fetch embraces.
By thee our noses swell

With sparkling carbuncle.

* Tapster, drawer. From skink, to draw liquor, to drink. + The noddle, or head-used here to imply the brain.

O the dear blood of grapes
Turns us to antic shapes,
Now to show tricks like apes,
Now lion-like to roar,
Now goatishly to whore,
Now hoggishly in the mire,
Now flinging hats in the fire.
Io Bacchus! at thy table,
Make us of thy reeling rabble.

CUPID.

CUPID! monarch over kings,

Wherefore hast thou feet and wings?

Is it to show how swift thou art,

When thou woundest a tender heart?
Thy wings being clipped, and feet held still,
Thy bow so many could not kill.

It is all one in Venus' wanton school,
Who highest sits, the wise man or the fool.
Fools in love's college

Have far more knowledge

To read a woman over,
Than a neat prating lover:

Nay, 'tis confessed,

That fools please women best.

GEORGE PEEL E.

155- 159

His name

[GEORGE PEELE was a native of Devonshire. appears in the Matriculation Book of Oxford as a member of Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College) in 1564, and Mr. Dyce, assuming him to have been at least twelve or thirteen when he was entered, places his birth about 1552 or 1553. While he was at the University, Wood tells us that he was

career.

esteemed a most noted poet. In 1577 he took his Bachelor's degree, and was made Master of Arts in 1579, after which he went up to London, and became a writer for the theatre. There is reason to believe that he appeared occasionally on the stage; but he certainly did not follow it as a profession. His intimate associates were Nash, Marlowe, and Greene, the most profligate men of genius of the time: and in the latter part of his life he was acquainted with Shakespeare, Jonson, and their contemporaries, who were coming in at the close of his Peele appears to have abandoned himself to the worst excesses of the town, and to have shortened his life by dissipation, if a coarse allusion to him by Francis Meres may be credited. The date of his death is unknown; but as Mere's reference to it was printed in 1598, it must have taken place in or before that year. He was one of the earliest of our poets who imparted form and power to the drama, was one of the contributors to the Phoenix Nest, and, in addition to numerous small pieces and Pageants, wrote several plays, only five of which have come down to us. Of the remainder, few, probably, were printed, and these are supposed to have been destroyed in the fire of London in 1666.

Peele holds a place amongst the dramatic poets of that period, described by Gifford as the time when the chaos of ignorance was breaking up,' second only to Marlowe. If his versification has not the pomp and grandeur of the 'mighty line,' of his great rival, it is sweeter and more melodious; and none of his contemporaries exhibit so much tenderness or so luxuriant a fancy. Charles Lamb dismisses his David and Bethsabe as 'stuff;' but this hasty judgment is balanced by the panegyric of Campbell, who speaks of it as 'the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry.' What Hazlitt says of the literature of the time generally applies to Peele in common with the rest: 'I would not be understood to say, that the age of Elizabeth was all gold without any alloy. There was both gold and lead in it, and often in one and the same writer.' There are both in Peele; but the gold was of the finest quality.]

THE ARRAIGNMENT OF PARIS. 1584.

ENONE AND PARIS.

En. FAIR and fair, and twice so fair,

As fair as any may be;

The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.

Par. Fair and fair and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be:

Thy love is fair for thee alone,
And for no other lady.

En. My love is fair, my love is gay,

As fresh as bin the flowers in May,
And of my love my roundelay,

My merry, merry, merry roundelay,
Concludes with Cupid's curse,

They that do change old love for new, Pray gods, they change for worse!

Ambo, simul. They that do change, &c.

En. Fair and fair, &c.

Par. Fair and fair, &c.

En. My love can pipe, my love can sing,
My love can many a pretty thing,
And of his lovely praises ring
My merry, merry roundelays,
Amen to Cupid's curse,

They that do change, &c.

THE SONG OF THE ENAMOURED SHEPHERD.

GENTLE Love, ungentle for thy deed,

Thou makest my

A bloody mark

With piercing shot to bleed.

heart

Shoot soft, sweet Love, for fear thou shoot amiss,

For fear too keen

Thy arrows been,

And hit the heart where my beloved is.

Too fair that fortune were, nor never I
Shall be so blest,
Among the rest,

That Love shall seize on her by sympathy.
Then since with Love my prayers bear no boot,
This doth remain

To ease my pain,

I take the wound, and die at Venus' foot.

ENONE'S COMPLAINT.

MELPOMENE, the muse of tragic songs,

With mournful tunes, in stole of dismal hue,

Assist a silly nymph to wail her woe,
And leave thy lusty company behind.

Thou luckless wreath! becomes not me to wear
The poplar tree, for triumph of my love:
Then as my joy, my pride of love, is left,
Be thou unclothed of thy lovely green;

And in thy leaves my fortunes written be,
And them some gentle wind let blow abroad,
That all the world may see how false of love
False Paris hath to his none been.

COLIN'S DIRGE.

WELLADAY, welladay, poor Colin, thou art going
to the ground,

The love whom Thestylis hath slain,
Hard heart, fair face, fraught with disdain,

Disdain in love a deadly wound.

Wound her, sweet love, so deep again,

That she may feel the dying pain

Of this unhappy shepherd's swain,

And die for love as Colin died, as Colin died.