Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is

Monday, July 15, 2004. And today's poem comes from Ben Johnson, the great Elizabethan playwright

and rival to Shakespeare. In fact, it comes from The Sad Shepherd, his Last and Incomplete Play.

It was written in the late 1630s and published after his death in 1641.

It is a story of Robin Hood.

And his merry men, Robin Hood, invites a group of local shepherds to a feast,

only to discover the mood dampened by one of the shepherds, Aglomor, the sad.

Who is, you guessed it, sad, because of some disappointments in love.

This poem, called by its first line, though I am young and cannot tell, is a song from the play, sung by one of Aglomor's companions, another shepherd named Carolyn the kind, and offered up in sympathy, or an attempt at sympathy with Aglomor,

who seems to be much more deeply initiated in the ways of love.

And Carolyn here, a more simple character who acknowledges his simplicity, and we'll see that there are some other clues to that demeanor in his language.

But here it is. I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time, though I am young and cannot tell.

Though I am young and cannot tell either what death or love as well, yet I have heard they both bear darts and both do aim at human hearts. And then again, I have been told love wounds with heat, as death with cold,

so that I fear they do but bring extremes to touch and mean one thing.

As in a ruin, we call it one thing to be blown up or fall.

Or to our end, like way may have by a flash of lightning or a wave.

So love's inflamed shaft or brand may kill as soon as death's cold hand.

Except love's fires the virtue have to fright the frost out of the grave.

There is in this poem a kind of youthful honesty or transparency.

We hear this character really reasoning his way through love

as it is really experienced.

He sees his friend suffering romantic disappointment

...