Thomas Dekker (c. 1570-1632). Here Lies the Blithe Spring. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Here Lies the Blithe Spring

By Thomas Dekker (c. 1570–1632)


HERE 1 lies the blithe Spring,
Who first taught birds to sing,
Yet in April herself fell a-crying:
Then May growing hot,
A sweating sickness she got,	5
And the first day of June lay a-dying.

Yet no month can say,
But her merry daughter May
Stuck her coffins with flowers great plenty:
The cuckoo sung in verse	10
An epitaph o’er her hearse,
But assure you the lines were not dainty.

Note 1. From Ford and Dekker’s The Sun’s Darling, 1656. The play was licensed in 1623–4. The songs are doubtless by Dekker. [back]