¶ The solitarie Sheepheards Song. +Printed in Thomas Lodge, A Margarite of America , (1596), sigs. L1v-2, where it is presented as a poem ‘in immitation of Martelli hauing the right nature of an Italian melancholie’, probably from Lodovico Martelli, Opere (Florence, 1548), fol. 47v: ‘O chiuse ualli, ò ricche piagge apriche,/O freschi colli, ò campi, ò selue santé,/… Ordite, io lasso il suo si dolce gioco’, reprinted in Rollins, II, 134. Author: Thomas Lodge. Structure (May/Ringler): 14: ababcdcdefgefg10
O Shadie Vales, ô faire enriched Meades, O sacred woods,vvoods, sweet fields, and rising mountaines: O painted flowers, greene hearbs where Flora treads, Refresht by wantonplayful, sportive winds and watry fountaines.
(5) O all you winged Queristerschoristers, birds of wood,vvood, that pearcht aloft, your former paines report: And straite againe recount with pleasant moode, your present ioyes in sweete and seemely sort.
O all you creatures whosoeuer thriue (10) on mother earth, in Seas, by ayre, by fire: More blest are you then I heere vnder Sunne, loue dies in me, when as he dooth reuiue In you, I perish vnder beauties ireanger, wrath , where after stormes, winds, frosts, your life is wunne.
FINIS. Thom. Lodge.
¶ The Sheepheards resolution in loue. +Printed in Thomas Watson, sonnet 37, The Hektompathia , (1582), sig. E3, with the headnote: ‘The Author in this passion doth by manner of secret comparison preferre his beloued before all other women whatsoeuer: and persuadeth vpon the examples of all sortes of Goddes (whom loue hath ouertaken at one time or other) that the worthiness of his Mistres being well considered, his owne fondnes in loue must of force be in it selfe excusable’. Another copy is in L: Harl. 3277, c. 1580, f. 21. Alexander Craig imitated this poem, probably using Englands Helicon , in his ‘To Pandora’, Amorose Songes (1606), sig. B7v, ‘Since Ioue him selfe was subiect to Loue,/And left the lift to catch a mortall pray./… In cignum, in pluuiam qui iubet ire Iouem.’ Author: Thomas Watson. Structure (May/Ringler): 18: 3×6 sx
I F Ioue him-selfe be subiect vnto Loue, And range the woodsvvoods to finde a mortall pray, If Neptune from the Seas him-selfe remoue, And seeke on sands with earthly wightsbeings, humans to play: (5) Then may I loue my Sheepheardesse by right; Who farre excells each other mortall wightbeing ?