PREFACE

THROUGHOUT this little book, as in the Text of my larger work, A Treasury of English Sonnets, from which its matter is almost wholly drawn, modern spelling has been adopted, as best suited to a volume intended for popular use; the only exceptions being confined to a few archaic forms, in the earlier pages, still not entirely obsolete.

It may also be mentioned that I have deferentially retained one or two orthographic anomalies in the case of Milton, and in that of Wordsworth, his own peculiar system of capitals.

As regards the sources of the poems, it has been thought necessary to state them only where not ascertainable from the Notes to my former work.

To the respective copyright owners by whose liberality I have been enabled to carry out my plan in its integrity, without hindrance from proprietary considerations, I have again to tender my grateful acknowledgments and thanks.

DOUNE, PERTHSHIRE,

March 1884.

D. M. M.

A RENOUNCING OF LOVE.

`AREWELL, Love, and all thy laws for ever!

FARE

Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more:

Senec and Plato call me from thy lore
To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavour.
In blind errour when that I did perséver,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Taught me in trifles that I set no store;
But 'scaped forththence, since, liberty is liever.
Therefore, farewell! go trouble younger hearts,
And in me claim no more authority:
With idle youth go use thy property,

And thereon spend thy many brittle darts;
For hitherto though I have lost my time,
Me list no longer rotten boughs to climb.

A CONSOLATION.

DIVERS doth use, as I have heard and know,

When that to change their ladies do begin,
To mourn, and wail, and never for to lynn,
Hoping thereby to 'pease their painful woe.
And some there be that when it chanceth so

That women change, and hate where love hath bin,
They call them false, and think with words to win
The hearts of them which otherwhere doth grow.
But as for me, though that by chance indeed
Change hath outworn the favour that I had,
I will not wail, lament, nor yet be sad,
Nor call her false that falsely did me feed;
But let it pass, and think it is of kind

That often change doth please a woman's mind

SPRING.

HE soote season, that bud and bloom furth brings,

THE

With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale,

The nightingale with feathers new she sings;

The turtle to her make hath told her tale.
Summer is come, for every spray now springs,

The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete with new-repairèd scale ;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings;
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.