Christmas with the poets, a collection of songs, carols, and verses [ed. by H. Vizetelly].

THE SHEPHERD'S SONG.

Then we will sing, and shine all our own day,

And one another pay:

His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till e'en his beams sing, and my music shine.

THE SHEPHERD'S SONG.

EDMUND BOLTON.

SWEET Music, sweeter far

Than

any song is sweet

Sweet Music heavenly rare,

Mine ears, O peers, doth greet.

You gentle flocks-whose fleeces, pearled with dew, Resemble Heaven, whom golden drops make bright—

Listen, O listen, now; O not to you

Our pipes make sport to shorten weary night;

But voices most divine

Make blissful harmony

Voices that seem to shine;

For what else clears the sky?

Tunes can we hear, but not the singers see:
The tune's divine, and so the singers be.

Lo, how the firmament

Within an azure fold

The flock of stars hath pent,

That we might them behold.

Yet from their beams proceedeth not this light,
Nor can their crystals such reflection give.
What then doth make the element so bright?

The heavens are come down upon earth to live.

But hearken to the song,
Glory to Glory's King,
And peace all men among,

These choristers do sing.

Angels they are, as also Shepherds, He
Whom in our fear we do admire to see.

Let not amazement blind

Your souls, said he, annoy :

To you and all mankind

My message bringeth joy.

For lo, the world's great Shepherd now is born,
A blessed Babe, an Infant full of power:
After long night, up-risen is the morn,
Renowning Bethlem in the Saviour.
Sprung is the perfect day,

By prophets seen afar,

Sprung is the mirthful May,

Which Winter cannot mar.

In David's city doth this Sun appear,

Clouded in flesh, yet Shepherds sit we here.

The following extracts comprise descriptions of Winter and the Christmas season, by the three greatest poets of the Elizabethan era, viz., Shakspeare, Spenser, and Jonson. These are preceded by some nervous lines penned by old Sackville, whose writings gave the tone to the revival of poetry at the commencement of Elizabeth's reign. Like the mere fragment quoted from Chaucer, they are the slightest possible

WINTER.

sketches; and yet the Winter song of Shakspeare's, from "As you like it," furnishes us with a picture in every line, and leaves us cause for regret that the few poems, we have here collected together, comprise the whole that the poet of all time has written relative to our subject. Jonson, as is well known, wrote a masque entitled " Christmas," but the verses it contains are the veriest doggrel, and the wit it is seasoned with is of the smallest quality; we therefore refrain from printing an extract from it, but give instead, a quotation from one of his poems, published under the title of "The Forest."

The stanzas by Spenser are from one of the imperfect books of the "Fairy Queen." It was evidently this description of Winter which Southey had in mind when he wrote the Sonnet quoted in Division VI. of the present work.

WINTER.

THOMAS SACKVILLE.

THE wrathful winter, 'proaching on a-pace
With blust'ring blast, had all ybared the treen ;
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierced the tender green ;
The mantle rent wherein enwrappèd been
The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapers torn, and every tree down blown;
The soil, that erst so seemly used to seem,

Was all despoiled of her beauties' hue,

And stole fresh flowers, (wherewith the Summer's queen
Had clad the earth) now Boreas' blast down blew ;

And small fowls flocking, in their songs did rue
The Winter's wrath, wherewith each thing, defaced,
In woeful wise bewail'd the Summer past:

Hawthorn had lost his motley livery,

The naked twigs were shivering all for cold,

And, dropping down the tears abundantly,

Each thing, methought, with weeping eye me told
The cruel season, bidding me withhold

Myself within.

WHEN icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail ;