their service duly yield:
On whom never Muse hath gazed
But in musing is amazed;
Where the honour is too much
For their highest thoughts to touch;
Thus confess, and get ye gone
To your places every one;
And in silence only speak
When ye find your speech too weak.
Blessed be Aglaia yet,
Though the Muses die for it;
Come abroad, ye blessed Muses,
Ye that Pallas chiefly chooses,
When she would command a creature
In the honour of Love's nature,
For the sweet Aglaia fair
All to sweeten all the air,
Is abroad this blessed day;
Haste ye, therefore, come away:
And to kill Love's maladies
Meet her with your melodies.
Flora hath been all about,
And hath brought her wardrobe out;
With her fairest, sweetest flowers,
All to trim up all your bowers.
Bid the shepherds and their swains
See the beauty of their plains;
And command them with their flocks
To do reverence on the rocks;
Where they may so happy be
As her shadow but to see:
Bid the birds in every bush
Not a bird to be at hush:
But to sit, and chirp, and sing
To the beauty of the Spring:
Call the sylvan nymphs together,
Bid them bring their musicks hither.
Trees their barky silence break,
Crack yet, though they cannot speak
Bid the purest, whitest swan
Of her feathers make her fan;
Let the hound the hare go chase;
Lambs and rabbits run at base;
Flies be dancing in the sun,
While the silk-worm's webs are spun;
Hang a fish on every hook
As she goes along the brook;
So with all your sweetest powers
Entertain her in your bowers;
Where her ear may joy to hear
How ye make your sweetest quire;
And in all your sweetest vein
Still Aglaia strike her strain;
But when she her walk doth turn,
Then begin as fast to mourn;
All your flowers and garlands wither
Put up all your pipes together;
Never strike a pleasing strain
Till she come abroad again.

Phyllida and Corydon

In the merry month of May,
In a morn by break of day,
With a troop of damsels playing
Forth I rode, forsooth, a-maying,
When anon by a woodside,
Where as May was in his pride,
I espied, all alone,
Phyllida and Corydon.

Much ado there was, God wot!
He would love, and she would not:
She said, never man was true;
He says, none was false to you.
He said, he had loved her long:
She says, Love should have no wrong.

Corydon would kiss her then,
She says, maids must kiss no men,
Till they do for good and all.
Then she made the shepherd call
All the heavens to witness, truth
Never