Last Song.[631]

We must away: yet our slack pace may show 'Tis by constraint we this fair Orb forego. Our longer stay may forfeit what but now Love hath obtained for us: to him we bow, And to this gentler Power, who so contriv'd That we from sullen shades are now depriv'd, And hither brought, where Favour, Love, and Light, So gloriously shine, they banish Night. More would we say, but Fate forbids us more.-- Our Cue is out--Good night is gone before.

"Fever-lurdens"--a jocular term for slothfulness.

"Pin and the web" was the name of a disorder of the eye.

The words "et fiet" are omitted in Add. MS.--Nichols gives "at first."--It may be remarked that Nichols' transcript is made throughout in a slovenly manner.

"But" is omitted by Collier, but found in Add. MS. and Nichols.

So Add. MS. and Nichols.--Collier gives "strued."

In Add. MS. and Nichols are some additional "paradoxes."

"Epicæne" in the MS. is struck out and "Newter" written as a correction.

Concert.

In Nichols' Progresses the Masque concludes with the following song:--

"The hour of sweety night decays a-pace, And now warm beds are better than this place. All time is long that is unwillingly spent, But hours are minutes when they yield content: The gathered flowers we love that breathe sweet scent, But loathe them, their sweet odours being spent. It is a life is never ill To lie and sleep in roses still.

The rarer pleasure is it is more sweet, And friends are kindest when they seldom meet. Who would not hear the nightingale still sing, Or who grew ever weary of the spring? The day must have her night, the spring her fall, All is divided, none is lord of all: It were a most delightful thing To live in a perpetual spring."

In the third line we should doubtless read "unwilling" for "unwillingly."

In Add. MS. follow some "paradoxes" which "were read at Gray's Inn but left out at Court to avoid tediousness." Most of these are found in pp. 428-432.

Amicis, amici nostri dignissimi dignissimis,