Welcome to my poetry reading of 'The Ploughman's Song' (or Phyllida and Corydon) by Nicholas Breton. Do you have a favourite poem or poet?
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'The Ploughman's Song' by Nicholas Breton
In the merry month of May,
In a morn by break of day,
With a troop of damsels playing
Forth I rode, forsooth, a-maying,
When anon by a woodside,
Where as May was in his pride,
I espied, all alone,
Phillida and Corydon.
Much ado there was, God wot!
He would love and she would not:
She said, "never man was true."
He says, "None was false to you."
He said he had loved her long:
She says, "Love should have no wrong."
Corydon he would kiss her then.
She says, "Maids must kiss no men
Till they do for good and all."
Then she made the shepherd call
All the heavens to witness, truth
Never loved a truer youth.
Thus, with many a pretty oath,
Yea and nay, and faith and troth, --
Such as silly shepherds use
When they will not love abuse, --
Love, which had been long deluded,
Was with kisses sweet concluded;
And Phillida, with garlands gay,
Was made the lady of the May.
(Source: https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10023660)
(Book featured in the video: The New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950, Chosen and Edited by Helen Gardner, Oxford Univeristy Press, First published 1972, 22nd impression 1999)