I happened upon this 1910 book, Early English Poems, at archive.org in its entirety and in several formats (plain text, jpg, pdf, kindle, etc). The selected poems are from the beginnings of English literature to up until Chaucer, Wyatt and Surrey.

In the book is a gem of a song called “Earth” (p 170), which seems to be all about man’s materialism. Ahead of its time, surely! I’d love to hear what it sounded like originally sung.

A note from the book:

That this singular and impressive little poem may be more readily understood, the word earth has been here printed with a capital wherever it is used to signify man, the creature made of the dust of the earth. This emphasizes the distinction between the different senses in which the word earth is used throughout the poem.

And (because I can’t copy and paste the correct formatting) here’s the song in image format:

I think “should” and “would” used to be “sholde” and “wolde”, and would therefore have rhymed with “mold” and “gold” in the fourth quatrain.