Lyrics to joyspring karin alyson6/3/2023 ![]() This poem is written with an apparently artless spontaneity and lack of sophistication which, it has been argued, conceals "a complex and sure art". It was published in full by Joseph Ritson in his Ancient Songs (1790, recte 1792), and then in George Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets (2nd edition, 1801). The reading public was first made aware of "Alysoun" in 1774, when Thomas Warton included an extract from it in the first volume of The History of English Poetry (1774). ![]() Harley's collection of books and manuscripts remained in his family for some years, then passed in the mid-18th century to the British Museum. The manuscript was later owned by the 17th-century antiquary John Battely, from whose heirs it was purchased in 1723 by Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Mortimer. The Harley Lyrics were collected and copied into the manuscript between about 13 by a writer known only as the Ludlow scribe, a professional legal scribe who worked in Ludlow, Shropshire between 13. It has reached us as one of the Harley Lyrics, a collection of Middle English lyric poems preserved, among much other material, in British Library Harley MS 2253. "Alysoun" is an anonymous poem, thought to have been composed in the late 13th or early 14th century. Most kind under skirt, listen to my song!". "It’s better to feel pain awhile than grieve forevermore. He is worn out with worry that someone else will take her. He is sleepless and pale with longing for her no-one can describe her goodness, for she is the most beautiful of all women. He describes her beauty and says that he will die unless she accepts him. In the refrain he tells us that he is fortunate: his love has been withdrawn from all other women and lighted on Alison. The poet begins by evoking the image of birds singing in the springtime, before declaring that he is love. It has been called one of the best lyrics in the language. ![]() "Alysoun" was included in The Oxford Book of English Verse, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, and The Longman Anthology of British Literature. There may once have been music for this poem, but if so it no longer survives. It forms part of the collection known as the Harley Lyrics, and exemplifies its best qualities. " Alysoun" or " Alison", also known as " Bytuene Mersh ant Averil", is a late-13th or early-14th century poem in Middle English dealing with the themes of love and springtime through images familiar from other medieval poems. The original manuscript of the poem, BL Harley MS 2253 f.63 v
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