(The first stanza is found among the poems of Sir Philip Sidney.)
Page [80]. “My prime of youth.”—This song is also set to music in Richard Alison’s “Hour’s Recreation,” 1606, and Michael Este’s “Madrigals of three, four, and five parts,” 1604. It is printed in “Reliquiæ: Wottonianæ” as “By Chidick Tychborn, being young and then in the tower, the night before his execution.” Chidiock Tychbourne of Southampton was executed with Ballard and Babington in 1586.
Page [80]. “My sweetest Lesbia.”—The first stanza is an elegant paraphrase from Catullus, though the last line fails to render the rhythmical sweetness long-drawn-out of “Nox est perpetua una dormienda.”
Page [81]. “My Thoughts are winged with Hopes.”—This piece is also found in “England’s Helicon.” A MS. copy, in a commonplace book found at Hamburg, is signed “W. S.” I have frequently met with these initials in volumes of MS. poetry of the early part of the seventeenth century. The following pretty verses in Add. MS. 21, 433, fol. 158, are subscribed “W. S.”:—
“O when will Cupid show such art
To strike two lovers with one dart?
I’m ice to him or he to me;
Two hearts alike there seldom be.
If ten thousand meet together,
Scarce one face is like another:
If scarce two faces can agree,
Two hearts alike there seldom be.”
There is not the slightest ground for identifying “W. S.” with Shakespeare. Mr. Linton (“Rare Poems,” p. 255) conjectures that “My Thoughts are winged with Hopes”—which has the heading “To Cynthia” in “England’s Helicon”—may be by Raleigh.
Page [83]. “Now each creature.”—The first stanza of “An Ode” by Samuel Daniel, originally printed in the 1592 edition of “Delia.”
“Now God be with old Simeon.”—Here is another round from “Pammelia”:—
“Come drink to me,
And I to thee.
And then shall we
Full well agree.