Sound & Sense: Simples to Sell

After sixth months of our Poems Ancient and Modern project, we offer an open thread for your suggestions, notes on what you’re reading and doing, etc.

Charles Meynier, Erato, Muse of Lyrical Poetry, 1800 (Cleveland Museum of Art)

Simples to Sell

by Gervase Markham and William Sampson

Come buy, you lusty gallants,
   These simples which I sell;
In all your days were never seen like these,
   For beauty, strength, and smell.
Here’s the king-cup, the pansy with the violet,
   The rose that loves the shower,
   The wholesome gillyflower,
      Both the cowslip, lily,
      And the daffodilly,
   With a thousand in my power.

Here’s gold amaranthus,
   That true love can provoke,
Of horehound store, and poisoning hellebore,
   With the polipode of the oak;
Here’s chaste vervine, and lustful eringo,
   Health preserving sage,
   And rue which cures old age,
      With a world of others,
      Making fruitful mothers;
   All these attend me as my page.