Spring is coming! longed-for spring
      Now his joy discloses;
    On his fair brow in a ring
      Bloom empurpled roses! 
    Birds are gay; how sweet their lay! 
      Tuneful is the measure;
    The wild wood grows green again,
    Songsters change our winter’s pain
      To a mirthful pleasure.

    Now let young men gather flowers,
      On their foreheads bind them,
    Maidens pluck them from the bowers,
      Then, when they have twined them,
    Breathe perfume from bud and bloom,
      Where young love reposes,
    And into the meadows so
    All together laughing go,
      Crowned with ruddy roses.

Here again the nightingale’s song, contending with the young man’s heart’s lament of love, makes itself heard.

THE LOVER AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

No. 7.

These hours of spring are jolly;
Maidens, be gay! 
Shake off dull melancholy,
Ye lads, to-day! 
Oh! all abloom am I! 
It is a maiden love that makes me sigh,
A new, new love it is wherewith I die!

The nightingale is singing
So sweet a lay! 
Her glad voice heavenward flinging—­
No check, no stay.

Flower of girls love-laden
Is my sweetheart;
Of roses red the maiden
For whom I smart.

The promise that she gives me
Makes my heart bloom;
If she denies, she drives me
Forth to the gloom.

My maid, to me relenting,
Is fain for play;
Her pure heart, unconsenting,
Saith, “Lover, stay!”

Hush, Philomel, thy singing,
This little rest! 
Let the soul’s song rise ringing
Up from the breast!

In desolate Decembers
Man bides his time: 
Spring stirs the slumbering embers;
Love-juices climb.

Come, mistress, come, my maiden! 
Bring joy to me! 
Come, come, thou beauty-laden! 
I die for thee! 
O all abloom am I! 
It is a maiden love that makes me sigh,
A new, new love it is wherewith I die!

There is a very pretty Invitation to Youth, the refrain of which, though partly undecipherable, seems to indicate an Italian origin.  I have thought it well to omit this refrain; but it might be rendered thus, maintaining the strange and probably corrupt reading of the last line:—­

    “List, my fair, list, bela mia,
    To the thousand charms of Venus!
    Da hizevaleria.”

THE INVITATION TO YOUTH.

No. 8.

    Take your pleasure, dance and play,
    Each with other while ye may: 
    Youth is nimble, full of grace;
    Age is lame, of tardy pace.

    We the wars of love should wage,
    Who are yet of tender age;
    ’Neath the tents of Venus dwell
    All the joys that youth loves well.