Thomas Dekker: COUNTRY GLEE

Thomas Dekker

(1570-1632)

COUNTRY GLEE

 

HAYMAKERS, rakers, reapers, and mowers,

Wait on your Summer-queen;

Dress up with musk-rose her eglantine bowers,

Daffodils strew the green;

Sing, dance, and play,

‘Tis holiday;

The sun does bravely shine

On our ears of corn.

Rich as a pearl

Comes every girl,

This is mine, this is mine, this is mine;

Let us die, ere away they be borne.

 

Bow to the Sun, to our queen, and that fair one

Come to behold our sports:

Each bonny lass here is counted a rare one,

As those in a prince’s courts.

These and we

With country glee,

Will teach the woods to resound,

And the hills with echoes hollow:

Skipping lambs

Their bleating dams,

‘Mongst kids shall trip it round;

For joy thus our wenches we follow.

 

Wind, jolly huntsmen, your neat bugles shrilly,

Hounds make a lusty cry;

Spring up, you falconers, the partridges freely,

Then let your brave hawks fly.

Horses amain,

Over ridge, over plain,

The dogs have the stag in chase:

‘Tis a sport to content a king.

So ho ho! through the skies

How the proud bird flies,

And sousing kills with a grace!

Now the deer falls; hark, how they ring!

 

‘Country Glee’ was originally published in The Sun’s Darling (1656).

Thomas Dekker poetry

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