The lyric ‘sequences’ published towards the close of the sixteenth century frequently contain more or less pastoral matter.  Barnabe Barnes appended some poems of this sort to his Parthenophil and Parthenophe (c. 1593), among others a version of Moschus’ idyl of runaway love, a theme which had long been a favourite one with pastoral writers.  Poliziano’s Latin translation of Moschus[127] was commended by E. K. in his notes to the Shepherd’s Calender, and the same original supplied Tasso with the subject of his Amore fuggitivo, which served as epilogue to the Aminta.  William Smith’s Chloris (1596), except for plentiful swearing by pastoral deities, is less bucolic in spite of its dedication to Colin Clout.  The most important of the sequences from our present point of view is Nicholas Breton’s Passionate Shepherd, which was not published till 1604.  It contains five pastorals in praise of Aglaia: 

    Had I got a kingly grace,
    I would leave my kingly place
    And in heart be truly glad
    To become a country lad,
    Hard to lie and go full bare,
    And to feed on hungry fare,
    So I might but live to be
    Where I might but sit to see,
    Once a day, or all day long,
    The sweet subject of my song;
    In Aglaia’s only eyes
    All my worldly paradise.

This is a fair specimen of Breton’s dainty muse, but his choicest work appeared in that wonderful anthology published in 1600 under the title of England’s Helicon.  To this collection Breton contributed such verses as the following: 

    On a hill there grows a flower—­
      Fair befall the dainty sweet!—­
    By that flower there is a bower,
      Where the heavenly muses meet.

    In that bower there is a chair,
      Fringed all about with gold;
    Where doth sit the fairest fair,
      That ever eye did yet behold.

    It is Phyllis fair and bright,
      She that is the shepherd’s joy;
    She that Venus did despite,
      And did bind her little boy.

Or again: 

    Good Muse, rock me asleep
      With some sweet harmony;
    The weary eye is not to keep
      Thy wary company.

    Sweet Love, begone awhile,
      Thou knowest my heaviness;
    Beauty is born but to beguile
      My heart of happiness.

Another poem no less perfect has been already quoted at length.  In its own line, the delicate carving of fair images as in crystal or some precious stone, Breton’s work is unsurpassed.  We cannot do better than take, as examples of a very large class, some of the poems printed, in most cases for the first time, in England’s Helicon.  Of Henry Constable, the poet indicated doubtless by the initiais H. C., we have a charming song between Phillis and Amaryllis, the counterpart and imitation of Spenser’s ‘Bonibell’ ballad: