called "merchantable ware." Michael Drayton (1563-1631), a
prolific poet, author of the _Ballad of Agincourt_, one of England's
greatest war songs, tells how he was employed by a lover to write a
sonnet which won the lady. Drayton's best sonnet is, _Since there's no
help, come let us kiss and part_.

Outside of the sonnets, we shall find love lyrics in great variety.
One of the most popular of Elizabethan songs is Ben Jonson's:--

"Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,
And I'll not look for wine."

The Elizabethans were called a "nest of singing birds" because such
songs as the following are not unusual in the work of their minor
writers:--

"Sweet air, blow soft; mount, lark, aloft
To give my love good morrow!
Winds from the wind to please her mind,
Notes from the lark I'll borrow."[4]

Pastoral Lyrics.--In Shakespeare's early youth it was the fashion to
write lyrics about the delights of rustic life with sheep and
shepherds. The Italians, freshly interesting in Vergil's _Georgics_
and _Bucolics_, had taught the English how to write pastoral verse.
The entire joyous world had become a Utopian sheep pasture, in which
shepherds piped and fell in love with glorified sheperdesses. A great
poet named one of his productions, _Shepherd's Calendar_ and Sir
Philip Sidney wrote in poetic prose the pastoral romance _Arcadia_.

Christopher Marlowe's _The Passionate Shepherd to his Love_ is a
typical poetic expression of the fancied delight in pastoral life:--

"...we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals."

Miscellaneous Lyrics.--As the Elizabethan age progressed, the
subject matter of the lyrics became broader. Verse showing consummate
mastery of turns expressed the most varied emotions. Some of the
greatest lyrics of the period are the songs interspersed in the plays
of the dramatists, from Lyly to Beaumont and Fletcher. The plays of
Shakespeare, the greatest and most varied of Elizabethan lyrical
poets, especially abound in such songs. Two of the best of these occur
in his _Cymbeline_. One is the song--

"Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,"

and the other is the dirge beginning:--

"Fear no more the heat o' the sun."

Ariel's songs in _The Tempest_ fascinate with the witchery of
untrammeled existence. Two lines of a s