O muse! that did me somedeal favour erst,
Whereas I piped my silly oaten
reede,
And songs in homely guise to mine reherst,
Well pleased with maiden’s
smilings for my meed;
Sweet muse, do give my Pegasus
good speede,
And send to him of thy high, potent might,
Whiles mortalls I all of my
theme do rede,
Thatte is the story of a doughty knight,
Who eftsoons wageth war, Kyng COTEN is
he hight.
Kyng Coten cometh of a goodly race,
Though black it was, as records
sothly tell;
But thatte is nought, which only is the
face,
And ne the hart, where alle
goode beings dwell;
For witness him the puissant
Hannibal,
Who was in veray sooth a Black-a-Moor;
And Cleopatra, Egypt’s
darksome belle,
And others, great on earth, a hundred
score;
Howbeit, ilke kyng was white, which doth
amaze me sore.
Kyng Coten cometh of a goodly race,
As born of fathers clean as
many as
The sands thatte doe the mighty sea-shore
grace,
But black, as sayde, as dark
is Erebus.
His rule the Southron Federation
was,
Thatte was a part of great Columbia,
Which was as fayre a clyme
as man mote pass;
And situate where Vesper holds his swaye,
But habited wilome by men of salvage fray.
Farre in the North he had an enimie,
Who certes was the knight’s
true soveraine,
Who liked not his wicked slaverie,
Which ’cross God’s
will was counter-wisely laine,
Whiles he himself, it seemeth
now right playne,
Did seek to have a kyngdom of his kynde,
Where he, as tyrant-like,
mote lonly raine;
So to a treacherie he fetched his mynde,
Which soon was rent in four, and sent
upon each wynde.
His enimie thatte liveth in the North,
Who, after all, was not his
enimie,
Ydeemed he was a gentilman of worth,
Too proud to make so vile
a villianie,
And, therefore, did ne tent
his railerie,
But went his ways, as was his wont wilome;
Goliah, he turned out eftsoons,
ah! me,
Who leaned upon his speare when David
come,
And laughed to scorn the sillie boy his
threat’ning doom.
But when his stronghold in ye Southron
land,
Of formidable front, Forte
Sumter hight,
Did fall into Kyng Coten’s rebell
hand,
Who coward-wise did challenge
to the fight,
Some several men again his
host of might;
Then Samuel, for so was he yclipt,
Begun in batail’s gear
himself to dight,
As being fooled by him with whom he sippt,
And hied him out, loud crying, ‘Treason
must be nippt!’
O ye who doe the crusades’ musters
tell,
In wise that maketh myndes
incredulous,
And paynte how like Dan Neptune’s
sweeping swell
The North bore down on the
perfidious!
Ne nigh so potent thatte as
was with us;
Where men, like locusts, darkened all
the land,
As marched they toward the
place that’s treacherous,
And shippes, that eke did follow the command,
Like forests, motion-got, doe walk along
the strand.