MAY 
On a day—alack the day!— 
Love, whose month is ever May, 
Spied a blossom passing fair 
Playing in the wanton air : 
Through the velvet leaves the wind, 
All unseen, can passage find ; 
That the lover, sick to death, 
Wish himself the heaven’s breath. 
Love's Labour's Lost, IV. iii, ioi. 
Up, then, I say, both young and old, both man and 
maid, a-maying, 
With drums and guns that bounce aloud, and merry 
tabor playing .—Knight of the Burning Pestle, IV. v. 
AY, the month of Venus, consecrated to love 
-L and joy, the month when at sunrise on its 
dawning day Phoebus opens the gate of Spring ! In 
theory the best of months, in practice very often a sadly 
disappointing one; but, nevertheless, poets w r elcome 
it with unfeigned jubilation. We ourselves must 
needs a-maying go with heart and soul. Its very 
name calls up to us a hundred innocent pleasures : 
“ knots of flowers” ; the maypole, with its May 
Queen; country revels in which all played their part, 
whether it were “ under the greenwood tree ” or in 
the verdant flower-strewn meads or hawthorn glades. 
England was “ merrie England ” then, and may be 
so once again if the would-be educationalists would 
cease, before they have expelled all originality of 
thought and all idea of humour from our rustic 
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