The Flower of the Mind

								


   He is Venus’ run-away’;
from Francis Davison:



   ‘Her angry eyes are great with tears’;
from George Wither:



         ‘I can go rest

         On her sweet breast

   That is the pride of Cynthia’s train’;
from Cowley:



   ‘Return, return, gay planet of mine east’!
The poems in which these are cannot make part of the volume, but the
citation of the fragments is a relieving act of love.
At the very beginning, Skelton’s song to ‘Mistress Margery Wentworth’ had
almost taken a place; but its charm is hardly fine enough.  If it is
necessary to answer the inevitable question in regard to Byron, let me
say that in another Anthology, a secondary Anthology, the one in which
Gray’s Elegy would have an honourable place, some more of Byron’s
lyrics would certainly be found; and except this there is no apology.  If
the last stanza of the ‘Dying Gladiator’ passage, or the last stanza on
the cascade rainbow at Terni,



   ‘Love watching madness with unalterable mien,’
had been separate poems instead of parts of Childe Harold, they would
have been amongst the poems that are here collected in no spirit of
arrogance, or of caprice, of diffidence or doubt.
The volume closes some time before the middle of the century and the
death of Wordsworth.



                                                                      A. M

CONTENTS



                                                                  PAGE
ANONYMOUS.
THE FIRST CAROL                                                    1
SIR WALTER RALEIGH (1552–1618).
VERSES BEFORE DEATH                                                1
EDMUND SPENSER (1553–1599).
EASTER                                                             2
FRESH SPRING                                                       2
LIKE AS A SHIP                                                     3
EPITHALAMION                                                       3
JOHN LYLY (1554?–1606).
THE SPRING                                                        17
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554–1586).
TRUE LOVE                                                         18
THE MOON                                                          18
KISS                                                              19
SWEET JUDGE                                                       19
SLEEP                                                             20
WAT’RED WAS MY WINE                                               20
THOMAS LODGE (1556–1625).
ROSALYND’S MADRIGAL                                               21
ROSALINE                                                          22
THE SOLITARY SHEPHERD’S SONG                                      24
ANONYMOUS.
I SAW MY LADY WEEP                                                24
GEORGE PEELE (1558?–1597).
FAREWELL TO ARMS                                                  25