John Lyly (1555?-1606). Song to Apollo. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

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

Song to Apollo

By John Lyly (1555?–1606)


SING 1 to Apollo, god of day,
Whose golden beams with morning play
And make her eyes so brightly shine,
Aurora’s face is called divine;
Sing to Phœbus and that throne	5
Of diamonds which he sits upon.
Io, pæans let us sing
To Physic’s and to Poesy’s king!

Crown all his altars with bright fire,
Laurels bind about his lyre,	10
A Daphnean coronet for his head,
The Muses dance about his bed;
When on his ravishing lute he plays,
Strew his temple round with bays.
Io, pæans let us sing	15
To the glittering Delian king!

Note 1. This song closes the Comedy of Midas, being sung at its first presentation before the “Queenes Maiestie upon Twelfe Day at Night, by the Children of Paules,” January 6, 1590. It did not appear in the first printed ed. of 1592, but was restored with six additional songs in the second ed. of the play by Edward Blunt in 1632. [back]

CONTENTS · GLOSSARY · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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