You and I both shall meet my father there,
And he shall bid you welcome.

Dorothea

A blessed day!

HAYMAKERS' SONG.

BY DEKKER.

HAYMAKERS, rakers, reapers, and mowers,
Wait on your Summer Queen!

Dress up with musk rose her eglantine bowers,
Daffodils strew the green!

Sing, dance, and play,

"Tis holiday!

The Sun does bravely shine

On our ears of corn.

Rich as a pearl

Comes every girl.

This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.

Let us die ere away they be borne.

Bow to our Sun, to our Queen, and that fair one

Come to behold our sports:

Each bonny lass here is counted a rare one,
As those in princes' courts.

These and we

With country glee,

Will teach the woods to resound,

And the hills with echoes hollow.
Skipping lambs

Their bleating dams

'Mongst kids shall trip it round;

For joy thus our wenches we follow.

Wind, jolly huntsmen, your neat bugles shrilly,
Hounds make a lusty cry;

Spring up, you falconers, partridges freely

Then let your brave hawks fly!

Horses amain

Over ridge, over plain,

The dogs have the stag in chase:

"Tis a sport to content a king.

So ho! ho! through the skies
How the proud bird flies,

And sousing, kills with a grace!
Now the deer falls; hark! how they ring.

EXEQUY.

BY HENRY KING, BISHOP OF CHICHESTER.

[1592-1669; Chaplain to James I.]

ACCEPT, thou shrine of my dead saint,
Instead of dirges, this complaint;

And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse

Receive a strew of weeping verse

From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see

Quite melted into tears for thee.

Dear loss since thy untimely fate,

My task hath been to meditate

On thee, on thee; thou art the book,

The library whereon I look,

Though almost blind; for thee (loved clay)

I languish out, not live, the day,

Using no other exercise

But what I practice with mine eyes,

By which wet glasses I find out

How lazily Time creeps about

To one that mourns; this, only this,
My exercise and business is:

So I compute the weary hours
With sighs dissolvèd into showers.

Nor wonder if my time go thus
Backward and most preposterous;
Thou hast benighted me; thy set
This eve of blackness did beget,
Who wast my day (though overcast
Before thou hadst thy noontide passed),
And I remember must in tears

Thou scarce hadst seen so many years
As day tells hours: by thy clear sun
My love and fortune first did run:

But thou wilt never more appear
Folded within my hemisphere,
Since both thy light and motion
Like a fled star is fallen and gone,

And 'twixt me and my soul's dear wish
The earth now interposed is,

Which such a strange eclipse doth make
As ne'er was read in almanac.

I could allow thee for a time
To darken me and my sad clime:
Were it a month, or year, or ten,
I would thy exile live till then.
And all that space my mirth adjourn,
So thou wouldst promise to return,
And, putting off thy ashy shroud,
At length disperse this sable cloud!

But woe is me! the longest date
Too narrow is to calculate
These empty hopes: never shall I
Be so much blessed as to descry
A glimpse of thee, till that day come
Which shall the earth to cinders doom,

And a fierce fever must calcine
The body of this world like thine,
(My little world!) that fit of fire
Once off, our bodies shall aspire

To our souls' bliss: then we shall rise,
And view ourselves with clearer eyes
In that calm region where no night
Can hide us from each other's sight.

Meantime thou hast her, Earth: much good

May my harm do thee! Since it stood.
With Heaven's will I might not call

Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-lived right and interest
In her whom living I loved best;
With a most free and bounteous grief
I give thee what I could not keep.
Be kind to her, and, prithee, look
Thou write into thy doomsday book
Each parcel of this Rarity

Which in thy casket shrined doth lie.

See that thou make thy reckoning straight,
And yield her back again by weight:
For thou must audit on thy trust
Each grain and atom of this dust,
As thou wilt answer Him that lent,
Not gave thee, my dear monument.
So, close the ground, and 'bout her shade
Black curtains draw: my bride is laid.

Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed
Never to be disquieted!

My last good night! Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake:

Till age or grief or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust

It so much loves, and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there: I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay;
I am already on the way,

And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrows breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And every hour a step toward thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,

Than when Sleep breathed his drowsy gale.
Thus from the sun my bottom steers,
And my day's compass downward bears;
Nor labor I to stem the tide

Through which to thee I swiftly glide.

'Tis true, with shame and grief I yield; Thou, like the van, first took'st the field, And gotten hast the victory,

In thus adventuring to die

Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But hark! my pulse, like a soft drum,
Beats my approach, tells thee I come⚫
And slow howe'er my marches be,

I shall at last sit down by thee.

The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolution

With hope and comfort. Dear (forgive
The crime), I am content to live,

Divided, with but half a heart,

Till we shall meet and never part.

PURCHAS TO HIS READERS.

(Introduction to the "Pilgrimes.")

[SAMUEL PURCHAS, born in Essex in 1577, graduated from St. John's College in 1600, and became a London rector, and chaplain to Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury. He gave his time mostly to geographical work: publishing in 1613 "Purchas, his Pilgrimage "; 1619, "Purchas, his Pilgrim "— both these original works; in 1625 "Purchas, his Pilgrimes," 4 vols., a continuation of Hakluyt's "Voyages," bound in manuscript, left him by Hakluyt, and differing wholly from the others in that the voyages are related by the actors themselves. He died in 1626, apparently in severe pecuniary trouble.]

WISDOME is said to bee the Science of things Divine and humane. Divine things are either naturall or supernaturall: these such, as the naturall man knoweth not, nor can know, because they are spiritually (with a spirituall Eye) discerned; called wisedome to salvation, the proper subject of Theologie, and not the peculiar argument of this Worke; which notwithstanding beeing the labour of a professed Divine, doth not abhorre from the same; but occasionally every where by Annotations, and in some parts professedly by speciall Discourses, insinuateth both the Historie and Mystery of Godlinesse, the right use of History, and all other Learning.

Naturall things are the more proper Object, namely the ordinary Workes of God in the Creatures, preserving and disposing by Providence that which his Goodnesse and Power had created, and dispersed in the divers parts of the World, as so many members of this great Bodie. Such is the History of Men in their diversified hewes and colours, quantities and proportions; of Beasts, Fishes, Fowles, Trees, Shrubs, Herbs, Minerals, Seas, Lands, Meteors, Heavens, Starres, with their naturall affections: in which many both of the Antient and Moderne have done worthily; but if neernesse of the Object deceive me not, this surmounteth them all in two Privilidges,