Ballads, English -- Texts; Songs, English -- Texts
MACAULAY, LORD
MARLOWE, CHRISTOPHER
MICKLE, WILLIAM JULIUS
MOORE, THOMAS
NAIRNE, LADY
NASH, THOMAS
PARKER, MARTIN
PERCY, THOMAS
PROCTOR, B.W.
ROGERS, SAMUEL
ROSS, ALEXANDER
SCOTT, SIR WALTER
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM
SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE
SHENSTONE, WILLIAM
SHIRLEY, JAMES
SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP
SOUTHEY, ROBERT
STILL, JOHN
SUCKLING, SIR JOHN
TENNYSON, LORD
THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
THOMPSON, JAMES
VAUX, LORD
WALLER, EDMUND
WEBSTER, JOHN
WITHER, GEORGE
WOLFE, CHARLES
WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM
WYATT, SIR THOMAS
SONGS AND BALLADS
MY SWETE SWETING
AH, my swete swetyng!
My lytyle prety swetyng,
My swetyng will I love wherever I go;
She is so proper and pure,
Full stedfast, stabill and demure,
There is none such, ye may be sure,
As my swete swetyng.
In all this world, as thynketh me,
Is none so pleasant to my eye,
That I am glad soe ofte to see,
As my swete swetyng.
When I behold my swetyng swete,
Her face, her hands, her minion fete,
They seme to me there is none so swete,
As my swete swetyng.
Above all other prayse must I,
And love my pretty pygsnye,
For none I fynd so womanly
As my swete swetyng.
_LORD VAUX_
THINKING
WHEN all is done and said,
In the end thus shall you find,
He most of all doth bathe in bliss
That hath a quiet mind:
And, clear from worldly cares,
To deem can be content
The sweetest time in all his life
In thinking to be spent.
The body subject is
To fickle Fortune's power,
And to a million of mishaps
Is casual every hour:
And Death in time doth change
It to a clod of clay;
Whenas the mind, which is divine,
Runs never to decay.
Companion none is like
Unto the mind alone;
For many have been harmed by speech
Through thinking, few, or none.
Fear oftentimes restraineth words,
But makes not thought to cease;
And he speaks best that hath the skill
When for to hold his peace.
Our wealth leaves us at death;
Our kinsmen at the grave;
But virtues of the mind unto
The heavens with us we have.
Wherefore, for virtue's sake,
I can be well content,
The sweetest time of all my life
To deem in thinking spent.
_RICHARD EDWARDES_
THE FALLING OUT OF FAITHFUL FRIENDS
IN going to my naked bed as one that would have slept,
I heard a wife sing to her child, that long before had wept;
She sighed sore, and sang full sweet, to bring the babe to rest,
That would not cease, but cried still, in sucking at her breast.
She was full weary of her watch, and grieved with her child;
She rocked it and rated it, till that on her it smiled:
Then did she say, Now have I found this proverb true to prove
The falling out of faithful friends, renewing is of love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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