As ye in trammels knit your locks,
Weep ye; and so enforce the rocks
In heavy murmurs through the broad shores tell,
How Willy bade his friend and joy farewell.
"Cease, cease, ye murdering winds,
To move a wave;
But if with troubled minds
You seek his grave,
Know, 't is as various as yourselves;
Now in the deep, then on the shelves,
His coffin toss'd by fish and surges fell,
Whilst Willy weeps, and bids all joy farewell.
"Had he, Arion like,
Been judged to drown,
He on his lute could strike
So rare a sound,
A thousand dolphins would have come, And jointly strive to bring him home, But he on ship-board died, by sickness fell, Since when his Willy bade all joy farewell.
"Great Neptune, hear a swain!
His coffin take,
And with a golden chain,
For pity, make
It fast unto a rock near land!
Where every calmy morn I'll stand,
And ere one sheep out of my fold I tell,
Sad Willy's pipe shall bid his friend farewell."
LXXXIV. A COUNTRY DANGER.
From Britannia's Pastorals, Book ii. Song 2.
OOK, as two little brothers, who address'd
To search the hedges for a thrush's nest,
And have no sooner got the leafy spring,
When, mad in lust with fearful bellowing,
A strong-neck'd bull pursues throughout the field
One climbs a tree, and takes that for his shield,
Whence looking from one pasture to another,
What might betide to his much-loved brother,
Further than can his over-drowned eyes
Aright perceive, the furious beast he spies
Toss something on his horns he knows not what;
But one thing fears, and therefore thinks it that:
When, coming nigher, he doth well discern
It of the wondrous one-night-seeding fern1
Some bundle was: yet thence he home-ward goes,
Pensive and sad, nor can abridge the throes
His fear began, but still his mind doth move
Unto the worst: "Mistrust goes still with love".
LXXXV. THE SHEPHERDESSES' GARLANDS.
From Britannia's Pastorals, Book ii. Song 3.
THE daisy scatter'd on each mead and down,
A golden tuft within a silver crown,
-Fair fall that dainty flower! and may there be
No shepherd graced that doth not honour thee!-
1 It was believed that on Midsummer Eve the common fern burst into a sudden growth, and became covered with the golden dust of fern seed. This, when gathered, made the bearer invisible. See Brand, Popular Antiquities, i. 314, and Frazer, The Golden Bough, ii. 287, 365.
The primrose when with six leaves gotten grace
Maids as a true-love in their bosoms place;
The spotless lily, by whose pure leaves be
Noted the chaste thoughts of virginity;
Carnations sweet with colour like the fire,
The fit impresas1 for inflamed desire.
The hare-bell for her stainless azured hue,
Claims to be worn of none but those are true.
The rose, like ready youth, enticing stands,
And would be cropp'd if it might choose the hands. The yellow king-cup, Flora them assign'd
To be the badges of a jealous mind.
The orange-tawny marigold, the night
Hides not her colour from a searching sight.
To thee then dearest friend, my song's chief mate,
This colour chiefly I appropriate,
That, spite of all the mists oblivion can
Or envious frettings of a guilty man,
Retain'st thy worth; nay, makest it more in price,
Like tennis-balls thrown down hard highest rise.
The columbine in tawny often taken,
Is then ascribed to such as are forsaken.
Flora's choice buttons of a russet dye
Is hope even in the depth of misery.
The pansy, thistle, all with prickles set,
The cowslip, honeysuckle, violet,
And many hundreds more that graced the meads,
Gardens and groves, where beauteous Flora treads,
Were by the shepherds' daughters, as yet are
Used in our cotes, brought home with special care:
For bruising them they not alone would quell
But rot the rest, and spoil their pleasing smell.
Much like a lad, who in his tender prime
Sent from his friends to learn the use of time,
As are his mates, or good or bad, so he
Thrives to the world, and such his actions be.
As in the rainbow's many colour'd hue,
Here see we watchet1 deepen'd with a blue,
There a dark tawny with a purple mix'd,
Yellow and flame, with streaks of green betwixt,
A bloody stream into a blushing run,
And ends still with the colour which begun,
Drawing the deeper to a lighter stain,
Bringing the lightest to the deepest again,
With such rare art each mingleth with his fellow,
The blue with watchet, green and red with yellow,
Like to the changes which we daily see
Above the dove's neck with variety,
Where none can say, though he it strict attends,
Here one begins, and there the other ends;
So did the maidens with their various flowers
Deck up their windows, and make neat their bowers,
Using such cunning as they did dispose
The ruddy peony with the lighter rose,
The monk's hood with the bugloss, and entwine
The white, the blue, the flesh-like columbine
With pinks, sweet-williams, that far off the eye
Could not the manner of their mixtures spy.
Then with those flowers they most of all did prize,
With all their skill and in most curious wise
On tufts of herbs or rushes, would they frame
A dainty border round the shepherd's name;
Or posies make, so quaint, so apt, so rare,
As if the Muses only livèd there,
And that the after world should strive in vain
What they then did to counterfeit again.
Nor will the needle nor the loom e'er be
So perfect in their best embroidery,
Nor such composures make of silk and gold,
As theirs, when Nature all her cunning told.
The opening of the First Eclogue of The Shepherd's Pipe (1614), a volume of pastorals by Browne and his three friends Christopher Brooke, George Wither, and John Davies of Hereford.
ROGET1, droop not, see, the spring
Is the earth enamelling,
And the birds on every tree
Greet this morn with melody:
Hark, how yonder throstle chants it,
And her mate as proudly vaunts it;
See how every stream is dress'd
By her margin with the best
Of Flora's gifts; she seemès glad
For such brooks such flowers she had.
All the trees are quaintly tired
With green buds, of all desired;
And the hawthorn every day
Spreads some little show of May.
See, the primrose sweetly set
By the much-loved violet
All the banks do sweetly cover,
As they would invite a lover,
With his lass, to see their dressing,
And to grace them by their pressing.
Yet in all this merry tide,
When all cares are laid aside,
1 Roget is probably an anagram of Geo. [Wi]t[he]r.
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