Carmela deare, even as the golden ball
    That Venus got, such are thy goodly eyes: 
    When cherries juice is jumbled therewithall,
    Thy breath is like the steeme of apple pies.

It would, of course, be grossly unfair to judge Robert Greene, the ever-sinning and ever-repentant, by the above injudicious experiment.  His lyrical powers appear in a very different light, for instance, in the ‘Palmer’s Ode’ in Never Too Late (1590), one of the most charming of his many confessions: 

    As I lay and kept my sheepe,
    Came the God that hateth sleepe,
    Clad in armour all of fire,
    Hand in hand with Queene Desire,
    And with a dart that wounded nie,
    Pearst my heart as I did lie,
    That, when I wooke, I gan sweare
    Phillis beautie palme did beare.

From the same romance I must do Greene the justice of quoting the delightful, though but remotely pastoral, song of every loving nymph to her bashful swain: 

    Sweet Adon, darest not glance thine eye—­
      N’oserez-vous, mon bel ami?—­
    Upon thy Venus that must die? 
      Je vous en prie, pity me: 
    N’oserez-vous, mon bel, mon bel—­
    N’oserez-vous, mon bel ami?

    See how sad thy Venus lies—­
      N’oserez-vous, mon bel ami?—­
    Love in heart and tears in eyes;
      Je vous en prie, pity me: 
    N’oserez-vous, mon bel, mon bel—­
    N’oserez-vous, mon bel ami?

It is hard to refrain from quoting half a dozen other pieces.  There is the courting of Phillis in Perimedes the Blacksmith (1588), with its purely idyllic close; or again the famous ‘Shepherd’s Wife’s Song’ from the Mourning Garment (1590): 

    Ah, what is love?  It is a pretty thing,
    As sweet unto a shepherd as a king;
       And sweeter too,
    For kings have cares that wait upon a crown,
    And cares can make the sweetest love to frown: 
       Ah then, ah then,
    If country loves such sweet desires do gain,
    What lady would not love a shepherd swain?

No one not utterly callous to the pathos of human life, or warped by some ethical twist beyond the semblance of a man, has ever been able to pass unmoved by the figure of Robert Greene.  We see him, the poet of all that is truest and tenderest in human affection, abandoning his young wife and child, drawn by the power of some fatal fascination into the whirlpool of low life in London, and then, as if inspired by a sudden revelation of objective vision, penning the throbbing lines of the forsaken mother’s song: 

    Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee,
    When thou art old there’s grief enough for thee.

We see him again amid the despair and squalor of his death-bed, warning his friends against his own example, and addressing to the wife he had not seen for years those words endorsed on a bill for ten pounds, words ever memorable in the history of English letters:  ’Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth, and by my soul’s rest, that thou wilt see this man paid; for if he and his wife had not succoured me I had died in the streets.’  Such are the scenes of sordid misery which underlie some of the choicest of English songs.  It is best to return to the surface.