English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 181. Country Glee |
| | | Thomas Dekker (1570(?)–1614) |
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| HAYMAKERS, rakers, reapers, and mowers, | |
| Wait on your Summer-Queen; | |
| Dress up with musk-rose her eglantine bowers, | |
| Daffodils strew the green; | |
| Sing, dance, and play, | 5 |
| ’Tis holiday; | |
| The sun does bravely shine | |
| On our ears of corn. | |
| Rich as a pearl | |
| Comes every girl, | 10 |
| This is mine, this is mine, this is mine; | |
| Let us die, ere away they be borne. | |
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| Bow to the Sun, to our Queen, and that fair one | |
| Come to behold our sports; | |
| Each bonny lass here is counted a rare one | 15 |
| As those in princes’ courts. | |
| These and we | |
| With country glee, | |
| Will teach the woods to resound, | |
| And the hills with echoes hollow: | 20 |
| Skipping lambs | |
| Their bleating dams, | |
| ’Mongst kids shall trip it round; | |
| For joy thus our wenches we follow. | |
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| Wind, jolly huntsmen, your neat bugles shrilly, | 25 |
| Hounds make a lusty cry; | |
| Spring up, you falconers, partridges freely, | |
| Then let your brave hawks fly. | |
| Horses amain, | |
| Over ridge, over plain, | 30 |
| The dogs have the stag in chase: | |
| ’Tis a sport to content a king. | |
| So ho, ho! through the skies | |
| How the proud bird flies, | |
| And sousing, kills with a grace! | 35 |
| Now the deer falls; hark! how they ring. | |
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