From THOMAS MORLEY's _First Book of Ballets_, 1595.
You that wont to my pipe's sound Daintily to tread your ground, Jolly shepherds and nymphs sweet, (Lirum, lirum.)
Here met together Under the weather, Hand in hand uniting, The lovely god come greet. (Lirum, lirum)
Lo, triumphing, brave comes he, All in pomp and majesty, Monarch of the world and king. (Lirum, lirum.)
Let whoso list him Dare to resist him, We our voices uniting, Of his high acts will sing. (Lirum, lirum.)
From THOMAS BATESON's _First Set of English Madrigals_, 1604.
Your shining eyes and golden hair, Your lily-rosèd lips so fair; Your various beauties which excel, Men cannot choose but like them well: Yet when for them they say they'll die, Believe them not,--they do but lie.
Thomas Weelkes was organist of Winchester College in 1600, and of Chichester Cathedral in 1608. His first collection, "Madrigals to three, four, five, or six voices," was published in 1597. Here first appeared the verses (fraudulently ascribed, in "The Passionate Pilgrim," 1599, to Shakespeare), "My flocks feed not." In 1598 Weelkes published "Ballets and Madrigals to five voices," which was followed in 1600 by "Madrigals of five and six parts." Prefixed to the last-named work is the following dedicatory epistle:--
"To the truly noble, virtuous, and honorable, my very good Lord Henry, Lord Winsor, Baron of Bradenham.
My Lord, in the College at Winchester, where I live, I have heard learned men say that some philosophers have mistaken the soul of man for an harmony: let the precedent of their error be a privilege for mine. I see not, if souls do not partly consist of music, how it should come to pass that so noble a spirit as your's, so perfectly tuned to so perpetual a _tenor_ of excellence as it is, should descend to the notice of a quality lying single in so low a personage as myself. But in music the _base_ part is no disgrace to the best ears' attendancy. I confess my conscience is untoucht with any other arts, and I hope my confession is unsuspected; many of us musicians think it as much praise to be somewhat more than musicians as it is for gold to be somewhat more than gold, and if _Jack Cade_ were alive, yet some of us might live, unless we should think, as the artisans in the Universities of Poland and Germany think, that the Latin tongue comes by reflection. I hope your Lordship will pardon this presumption of mine; the rather, because I know before Nobility I am to deal sincerely; and this small faculty of mine, because it is alone in me, and without the assistance of other more confident sciences, is the more to be favoured and the rather to be received into your honour's protection; so shall I observe you with as humble and as true an heart, as he whose knowledge is as large as the world's creation, and as earnestly pray for you to the world's Creator.