If thou long’st so much to learn, sweet boy, what ’tis to love,
With thee dance I will, and sing, and thy fond dalliance bear;
We the grovy hills will climb and play the wantons there;
Other whiles we’ll gather flowers,
Lying dallying on the grass;
And thus our delightful hours,
Full of waking dreams, shall pass.
When thy joys were thus at height, my love should turn from thee,
Old acquaintance then should grow as strange, as strange might be:
Twenty rivals thou shouldst find,
Breaking all their hearts for me,
While to all I’ll prove more kind
And more forward than to thee.
Thus thy silly youth, enraged, would soon my love defy,
But, alas, poor soul, too late! clipt wings can never fly.
Those sweet hours which we had past,
Called to thy mind, thy heart would burn;
And couldst thou fly ne’er so fast,
They would make thee straight return.
From William Byrd’s Psalms, Sonnets and Songs, 1588.
If women could be fair and never fond,
To mark what choice they make and how they change,
How, leaving best, the worst they choose out still;
And how, like haggards wild, about they range,
And scorning reason follow after will![6]
Who would not shake such buzzards from the fist
And let them fly (fair fools!) which way they list?
Yet for our sport we fawn and flatter both,
To pass the time when nothing else can please:
And train them on to yield by subtle oath
The sweet content that gives such humour ease:
And then we say, when we their follies try,
“To play with fools, O, what a fool was I!”
[6] So Oliphant.—Old ed., “Scorning after reason to follow will.”