poem 15
The dew as diamonds did hang
Upon the tender twists, and young,
O'er-'twinkling all the trees;
And aye where flowers flourished fair,
There suddenly I saw repair,
In swarms, the sounding bees:
Some sweetly have the honey sought,
While they were clogged sore:
Some willingly the wax have wrought,
To heap it up in store;
So heaping, with keeping,
Into their hives they hide it:
Precisely and wisely,
For winter they provide it.
(The fifth verse in the Scottish poet, Alexander Montgomerie's, "The Cherrie and the Slae", first published in 1597. It deals with a then-popular theme, 'Whether a lover should aspire to a Lady far above him in birth (the cherry tree) or be content with a more lowly love (the sloe bush)''. Even the editor of my copy describes it as 'rather tedious'! But some initial scene-setting verses are pleasing. All 114 verses maintain the same complex rhyming pattern, which is combined with the earlier tradition of alliteration within a line. A M (1545 to ? 1611) wrote other less heavy poems including the following, which like the above I have re-spelt for easier comprehension)
So sweet a kiss yestere'en from thee I bereft
In bowing down thy body on the bed,
That even my Life within thy lips I left:
Sensing from thee my Spirit would never shed,
To follow thee it from my body fled
And left my corpse as cold as any key;
But, when the danger of my death I dread,
To seek my Spirit I sent my Heart to thee:
But it was so enamoured with thine eye
With thee it minded likewise to remain,
So thou has kept captive all the three,
More glad to bide than to return again.
Except thy breath their places had supplied,
Even in thine arms, doubtless, had I died