Love not, love not: the thing you love may change, The kindly beaming eye grow cold and strange, Love not, love not. Love not, love not: oh! warning vainly said, UNDER the title of Pastoral and Rural Songs may be included some of the most beautiful specimens of our early poetical literature. Vast quantities of these songs, once popular among the English people, anterior to the reign of Elizabeth, have perished altogether. Many of them in all probability were never committed to the custody of print and paper, and escaped with the breath of the wandering minstrels who composed and sang them. Others, again, at a somewhat later period, fared but little better at the hands of Time. "The ancient songs of the people," says D'Israeli the elder, "perished by having been printed in single sheets, and by their humble purchasers having no other library to preserve them than the walls on which they pasted them. Those we now have consist of a succeeding race of ballads." The pastoral lovesongs, which we owe chiefly to the writers of the age of the Stuarts, include few compositions so beautiful as Marlowe's "Passionate Shepherd to his Love," and Sir Walter Raleigh's "Reply." The shepherds of that race of lyrists were, with few exceptions, merely stage shepherds in the usual theatrical costume, and the shepherdesses were "ladies of quality," dressed up for the occasion. Even Shakspeare himself, who touched or borrowed nothing that he did not improve, could make little of this kind of composition. It was not true to nature; and yet it continued in that decline of literary taste which began, in the reign of Charles the Second, to have charms for writers, readers, and singers. Such ditties as the following had far more vitality than merit: 66 By a murmuring stream a fair shepherdess lay, 'Be so kind, O ye nymphs,' I oft heard her say, And that love is the cause of my mourning. False shepherds, that tell me of beauty and charms, Oh! Strephon's the cause of my mourning.'" At last, according to the most popular of all the pastorals, the nymph died, and Strephon came by:— "Her eyes were scarce closed when her Strephon came by, He thought she'd been sleeping, and softly drew nigh; But finding her breathless, ‘Oh, heavens!' he did cry, 'Ah, Chloris! the cause of my mourning.' Ultimately, Strephon himself, smitten with remorse, fell down by her side, and died: 66 "On her cold snowy breast he lean'd down his head, And expired, the poor Strephon, with mourning." The satire of Pope, and the verses of the Lady of Quality, (which we have previously quoted in our remarks prefacing the Songs of the Affections") did not produce much effect in putting a stop to this affectation, and the age persisted in looking with favour upon pastoral love songs, in which all lovers were represented as shepherds and shepherdesses, billing and cooing amid their sheep, by the side of purling brooks. Corydon wept among his flocks because Chloe or Phoebe was cruel, and Chloe called upon echo to repeat the name of Corydon-the falsest of shepherds and of men. The pastoral mania lasted for a considerable time; and traces of it are to be found in the popular songs of the last half of the eighteenth and the commencement of the present century, when it finally went out, much to the gratification of all lovers of true poetry. The rural songs, that make no attempt at describing the loves and sorrows of Strephon and the Amyntas, and the other masquerading shepherds are of a higher class than these. The pleasures and enjoyments of a country life have always been, and always will be, themes for song; and descriptions of natural scenery, intermingled with those sentiments and feelings which they naturally prompt-gaiety to the gay, and sadness to the sad-will ever inspire the true lyrist. The songs of a succeeding age, like those which charmed our forefathers and which charm ourselves, must draw largely from this source; and the banishment of wine as a subject of lyric eulogy, and of paganism as a subject of illustration for modern thought and feeling, will increase the number of those purer compositions, which the present age has begun to insist upon, and which the next will insist upon more strongly. THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE. COME live with me, and be my love, And we will sit upon the rocks, And I will make thee beds of roses, A gown made of the finest wool, |