VIII. Cupid's Assault: by Lord Vaux. ........................................................................
The reader will think that infant poetry grew apace between the times of
Rivers and Vaux, though nearly contemporaries; if the following song is the
composition of that Sir Nicholas (afterwards Lord) Vaux, who was the shining
ornament of the court of Henry VII. and died in the year 1523.
And yet to this Lord it is attributed by Puttenham in hisArt of Eng. Poesie,- 4to. a writer commonly well informed: take the passage at large. "In this figure
[Counterfait Action] the Lord Nicholas Vaux, a noble gentleman and much delighted
in vulgar making, and a man otherwise of no great learning, but having herein a
marvelous facilitie, made a dittie representing the Battayle and Assault of Cupide, so
excellently well, as for the gallant and propre application of his fiction in every part, I
cannot choose but set downe the greatest part of his ditty, for in truth it cannot be
amended. 'When Cupid scaled,' &c." p. 200. For a farther account of Nicholas Lord
Vaux, see Mr. Walpole'sNoble Authors, Vol. i.
The following copy is printed from the first edition ofSurrey's Poems, 1557,
4to. See another song of Lord Vaux's, Book ii. No. 2.
WHEN Cupide scaled first the fort,
Wherein my hart lay wounded sore;
The batry was of such a sort,
That I must yelde or die therfore.
There sawe I Love upon the wall,
How he his banner did display:
"Alarme, alarme," he gan to call:
And bad his souldiours kepe aray.
The armes, the which that Cupide bare,
Were pearced hartes with teares besprent,
In silver and sable to declare
The stedfast love, he alwayes ment.
There might you se his band all drest
In colours like to white and blacke,
With powder and with pelletes prest
To bring the fort to spoile and sacke.
Good-wyll, the maister of the shot,
Stode in the rampire brave and proude,
For spence of pouder he spared not
"Assault! assault!" to crye aloude.
There might you heare the cannons rore;
Eche pece discharged a lovers loke;
Which had the power to rent, and tore
In any place whereas they toke.
And even with the trompettes sowne
The scaling ladders were up set,
And Beautie walked up and downe,
With bow in hand, and arrowes whet.