Ballads, English -- Texts; Songs, English -- Texts
A sweet disorder in the dress
[A happy kind of carelessness;]
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction;
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthralls the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribands that flow confusedly;
A winning wave, deserving note
In the tempestuous petticoat;
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility;
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.
CHERRY RIPE
Cherry ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,
Full and fair ones--come and buy;
If so be you ask me where
They do grow?--I answer: There,
Where my Julia's lips do smile--
There's the land, or cherry-isle;
Whose plantations fully show
All the year where cherries grow.
VIRTUE
GEORGE HERBERT
Sweet day! so cool, so calm, so bright
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dews shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose! whose hue, angry and brave,
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;
Thy root is ever in its grave;
And thou must die.
Sweet spring! full of sweet days and roses;
A box where sweets compacted lie;
Thy music shows ye have your closes;
And all must die.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber never gives;
But, though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
THE SPANISH ARMADO
Some years of late, in eighty-eight,
As I do well remember,
It was, some say, the middle of May,
And some say in September,
And some say in September.
The Spanish train launch'd forth amain,
With many a fine bravado,
Their (as they thought, but it prov'd not)
Invincible Armado,
Invincible Armado.
There was a man that dwelt in Spain
Who shot well with a gun a,
Don Pedro hight, as black a wight
As the Knight of the Sun a,
As the Knight of the Sun a.
King Philip made him Admiral,
And bid him not to stay a,
But to destroy both man and boy
And so to come away a,
And so to come away a.
Their navy was well victualled
With bisket, pease, and bacon,
They brought two ships, well fraught with whips,
But I think they were mistaken,
But I think they were mistaken.
Their men were young, munition strong,
And to do us more harm a,
They thought it meet to joyn their fleet
All with the Prince of Parma,
All with the Prince of Parma.
They coasted round about our land,
And so came in by Dover:
But we had men set on 'em then,
And threw the rascals over,
And threw the rascals over.
The Queen was then at Tilbury,
What could we more desire a?
Sir Francis Drake for her sweet sake
Did set them all on fire a,
Did set them all on fire a.
Then straight they fled by sea and land,
That one man kill'd threescore a,
And had not they all run away,
In truth he had kill'd more a,
In truth he had kill'd more a.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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