Heroic Epistles after the model of Ovid.
The Barons’ Wars in the Reign of Edward the Second.
The Battle of Agincourt.
The Shepherd’s Garland.
Elegies.
The Man in the Moon, the Owl, Odes, and various other small Poems.
But his greatest work is the Poly-Olbion, in twenty Cantos or Songs,
of which the first is here given, with the Author’s Notes or
Illustrations, as it contains a description of Cornwall, commencing
with a Dialogue between St. Michael’s Mount and the Bar of Hayle,
which must have passed immediately over Tredrea the Editor’s House.
The singular title of his great work is derived from the Greek Πόλυς
many and also very; and Ολβιὸς happy; some neuter substantive
understood, perhaps the Latin _Regnum_; and founded on one of the idle
fancies current in the middle ages, which derived Albion (a name of
this island) in some way or another from Ολβιὸς.
* * * * *
Michael Drayton commences his national poem with the western point of
the Country, and his First Song is as follows: