You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfie our eies
More by your number, than your light;
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the Moon shall rise? 5
Ye violets that first appeare,
By your pure purple mantles known
Like the proud virgins of the yeare,
As if the Spring were all your own;
What are you when the Rose is blown? 10
Ye curious chaunters of the wood,
That warble forth dame Nature's layes,
Thinking your passions understood
By your weak accents: what's your praise,
When Philomell her voyce shall raise? 15
So when my mistris shal be seene
In sweetnesse of her looks and minde;
By virtue first, then choyce a queen;
Tell me, if she was not design'd
Th' eclypse and glory of her kind? 20
VIII.
THE OLD AND YOUNG COURTIER.
This excellent old song, the subject of which is a comparison between the manners of the old gentry, as still subsisting in the times of Elizabeth, and the modern refinements affected by their sons in the reigns of her successors, is given, with corrections, from an ancient black-letter copy in the Pepys collection, compared with another printed among some miscellaneous "poems and songs" in a book intitled, Le Prince d'amour, or The Prince of Love, 1660, 8vo.