(GEORGE HERBERT.) ALL after pleasures as I rid one day, My horse and I, both tired, body and mind, With full cry of affections, quite astray, I took up in the next inn I could find, There when I came, whom found I but my dear, My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief Of pleasures brought me to him, ready there To be all passengers' most sweet relief? O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light, Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger; Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right, To man of all beasts be not thou a stranger: Furnish and deck my soul, that thou mayst have A better lodging, than a rack or grave. The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be? My soul's a shepherd too; a flock it feeds The pasture is thy word; the streams, thy grace Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers Outsing the daylight hours. Then we will chide the sun for letting night Take up his place and right: We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should Himself the candle hold. I will go searching, till I find a sun Shall stay till we have done ; A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly, As frost-night suns look sadly. 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 cars, 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: 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, The heavens are come down upon earth to live. These choristers do sing. Angels they are, as also Shepherds, He 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, Sprung is the perfect day, By prophets seen afar, Which Winter cannot mar. In David's city doth this Sun appear, Clouded in flesh, yet Shepherds sit we here. "Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes, SHAKSPEARE, 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. Like the mere fragment quoted from Chaucer, these are the slightest possible sketches; and yet the song of Shakspeare's, from "As you like it," furnishes us with a picture in every line, and leaves us cause for regret, that this poem with the Holly song, given a few pages further on, and the few lines quoted above, WINTER. comprise the whale 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 commencing, "A wrinkled, crabbed man they picture thee, quoted in Division VI. of the present work. WINTER. (EDMUND SPENSER.) NEXT came the chill December: Yet he, through merry feasting which he made And great bonfires, did not the cold remember; His Saviour's birth his mind so much did glad : Upon a shaggy bearded goat he rode, The same wherewith Dan Jove in tender years, And in his hand a broad deep bowl he bears, Lastly, came Winter clothed all in frieze, Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill; Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freeze, In his right hand a tipped staff he held, With which his feeble steps he stayed still; For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld ; That scarce his loosed limbs he able was to wield. |