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| WHO can live in heart so glad | |
| As the merry country lad? | |
| Who upon a fair green balk | |
| May at pleasure sit and walk, | |
| And amid the azure skies | 5 |
| See the morning sun arise,— | |
| While he hears in every spring | |
| How the birds do chirp and sing: | |
| Or before the hounds in cry | |
| See the hare go stealing by: | 10 |
| Or along the shallow brook, | |
| Angling with a baited hook, | |
| See the fishes leap and play | |
| In a blessèd sunny day: | |
| Or to hear the partridge call, | 15 |
| Till she have her covey all: | |
| Or to see the subtle fox, | |
| How the villain plies the box: | |
| After feeding on his prey, | |
| How he closely sneaks away, | 20 |
| Through the hedge and down the furrow | |
| Till he gets into his burrow: | |
| Then the bee to gather honey, | |
| And the little black-haired coney, | |
| On a bank for sunny place, | 25 |
| With her forefeet wash her face: | |
| Are not these, with thousands moe | |
| Than the courts of kings do know, | |
| The true pleasing spirit’s sights | |
| That may breed true love’s delights? | 30 |
| But with all this happiness, | |
| To behold that Shepherdess, | |
| To whose eyes all shepherds yield | |
| All the fairest of the field, | |
| —Fair Aglaia, in whose face | 35 |
| Lives the shepherd’s highest grace; | |
| For whose sake I say and swear, | |
| By the passions that I bear, | |
| Had I got a kingly grace, | |
| I would leave my kingly place | 40 |
| And in heart be truly glad | |
| To become a country lad; | |
| Hard to lie, and go full bare, | |
| And to feed on hungry fare, | |
| So I might but live to be | 45 |
| Where I might but sit to see | |
| Once a day, or all day long, | |
| The sweet subject of my song: | |
| In Aglaia’s only eyes | |
| All my worldly paradise. | 50 |
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