This delightful madrigal is one of the best-known English pastorals. Its charming, dance-like

melody and slightly suggestive lyrics give an effect of playfulness and simplicity that epitomize

the genre.

The brief narrative describes Phyllys, a shepherdess, sitting alone, while her lover Amyntas

searches for her, and goes on to describe what happens when he finds her. (The names Phyllis

and Amyntas are stock names, roughly drawn from the Greek, shepherdesses and shepherds, rather

like Chloe and Amaryllis. Nearly every pastoral madrigal uses some variation on these names,

which Gilbert and Sullivan spoofed in Ruddigore.)

The music starts almost like a verse and choral refrain, as a solo singer starts each line, but

it settles into the standard madrigal form, with the voices mingling. The depiction of his

searching "up and down" for her is especially charming, and faintly suggestive, as it occurs again

after the line "when he found her, oh, then they fell a kissing." The harmonies are especially

clear in this section, to assure that the listener doesn't miss the insinuations!

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