Lo, the Spring of life slips by,
Frozen Winter comes apace;
Strength is ’minished silently,
Care writes wrinkles on our face: 
Blood dries up and courage fails us,
Pleasures dwindle, joys decrease,
Till old age at length assails us
With his troop of illnesses. 
Like a dream our prime is flown,
Prisoned in a study;
Sport and folly are youth’s own,
Tender youth and ruddy.

Live we like the gods above;
This is wisdom, this is truth: 
Chase the joys of tender love
In the leisure of our youth! 
Keep the vows we swore together,
Lads, obey that ordinance;
Seek the fields in sunny weather,
Where the laughing maidens dance. 
Like a dream our prime is flown,
Prisoned in a study;
Sport and folly are youth’s own,
Tender youth and ruddy.

There the lad who lists may see
Which among the maids is kind: 
There young limbs deliciously
Flashing through the dances wind: 
While the girls their arms are raising,
Moving, winding o’er the lea,
Still I stand and gaze, and gazing
They have stolen the soul of me! 
Like a dream our prime is flown,
Prisoned in a study;
Sport and folly are youth’s own,
Tender youth and ruddy.

XV.

A separate Section can be devoted to songs in the manner of the early French pastoral.  These were fashionable at a remote period in all parts of Europe; and I have already had occasion, in another piece of literary history, to call attention to the Italian madrigals of the fourteenth century composed in this species.[30] Their point is mainly this:  A man of birth and education, generally a dweller in the town, goes abroad into the fields, lured by fair spring weather, and makes love among trees to a country wench.

The Vagi turn the pastoral to their own purpose, and always represent the greenwood lover as a clericus.  One of these rural nieces has a pretty opening stanza:—­

“When the sweet Spring was ascending,
Not yet May, at April’s ending,
While the sun was heavenward wending,
Stood a girl of grace transcending
Underneath the green bough, sending

                Songs aloft with pipings.”

Another gives a slightly comic turn to the chief incident.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 30:  See Renaissance in Italy, vol. iv. p. 156.]

A PASTORAL.

No. 24.

    There went out in the dawning light
      A little rustic maiden;
    Her flock so white, her crook so slight,
      With fleecy new wool laden.

    Small is the flock, and there you’ll see
      The she-ass and the wether;
    This goat’s a he, and that’s a she,
      The bull-calf and the heifer.