"Ye curious carpet-knights that spend the time in sport and play,
Abroad and see new sights, your country's cause calls you away:
Do not, to make your ladies' game, bring blemish to your worthy name.
Away to field and win renown, with courage beat your enemies down;
Stout hearts gain praise, when dastards sail in slander's seas.
Hap what hap shall, we soon shall die but once for all.

"Alarm! methinks they cry. Be packing mates, begone with speed,
Our foes are very nigh: shame have that man that shrinks at need.
Unto it boldly let us stand, God will give right the upper hand.
Our cause is good we need not doubt: in sign of courage give a shout;
March forth, be strong, good hap will come ere it be long.
Shrink not, fight well, for lusty lads must bear the bell.

"All you that will shun evil must dwell in warfare every day.
The world, the flesh, the devil always do seek our souls' decay.
Strive with these foes with all your might, so shall you fight a
worthy fight.
That conquest dost deserve most praise, whose vice do[th] yield to
virtue's ways.
Beat down foul sin, a worthy crown then shall ye win:
If ye live well, in Heaven with Christ our souls shall dwell."

[28] I print this as in the original, but perhaps the rhythm, which is an
odd one, would be better marked if lines 1 and 2 were divided into sixes
and eights, lines 3 and 4 into eights, and lines 5 and 6 into fours and
eights as the rhyme ends.

Of the same date, or indeed earlier, are the miscellaneous poems of Thomas
Howell, entitled _The Arbour of Amity_, and chiefly of an ethical
character. Less excusable for the uncouthness of his verse is Matthew
Grove, who, writing, or at least publishing, his poems in 1587, should have
learnt something, but apparently had not. It has to be said in excuse of
him that his date and indeed existence are shadowy, even among the shadowy
Elizabethan bards; his editor, in worse doggerel than his own, frankly
confessing that he knew nothing about him, not so much as whether he was
alive or dead. But his work, Howell's, and even part of Gifford's, is
chiefly interesting as giving us in the very sharpest contrast the
differences of the poetry before and after the melodious bursts of which
Spenser, Sidney, and Watson were the first mouthpieces. Except an utter
dunce (which Grove does not seem to have been by any means) no one who had
before hi