Note 631 — ACT V. (continued 3)
Reading edition
In Nichols’ Progresses the Masque concludes with the following song:— “The hour of sweety night decays a-pace, And now warm beds are better than this place. All time is long that is unwillingly spent, But hours are minutes when they yield content: The gathered flowers we love that breathe sweet scent, But loathe them, their sweet odours being spent. It is a life is never ill To lie and sleep in roses still. The rarer pleasure is it is more sweet, And friends are kindest when they seldom meet. Who would not hear the nightingale still sing, Or who grew ever weary of the spring? The day must have her night, the spring her fall, All is divided, none is lord of all: It were a most delightful thing To live in a perpetual spring.”
In the third line we should doubtless read “unwilling” for “unwillingly.”