Roget sits as if his blood
Had not felt the quickening good
Of the sun, nor cares to play,
Or with songs to pass the day,
As he wont. Fie, Roget, fie!
Raise thy head, and merrily
Tune us somewhat to thy reed.
See, our flocks do freely feed:
Here we may together sit,
And for music very fit

Is this place; from yonder wood
Comes an echo shrill and good;
Twice full perfectly it will
Answer to thine oaten quill.

Roget, droop not then, but sing
Some kind welcome to the spring.

LXXXVII. THE DEATH OF PHILARETE.

The Fourth Eclogue of The Shepherd's Pipe. Philarete stands for Browne's friend, Thomas Manwood, who was drowned in September, 1613.

UNDER an aged oak was Willy laid,

Willy, the lad who whilome made the rocks
To ring with joy, whilst on his pipe he play'd,
And from their masters woo'd the neighbouring flocks:
But now o'er-come with dolours deep

That nigh his heart-strings rent,

Ne cared he for his silly sheep,

Ne cared for merriment.

But changed his wonted walks

For uncouth paths unknown,

Where none but trees might hear his plaints,

And echo rue his moan.

Autumn it was, when droop'd the sweetest flowers,
And rivers (swollen with pride) o'er-look'd the banks;
Poor grew the day of summer's golden hours,
And void of sap stood Ida's cedar-ranks;
The pleasant meadows sadly lay

In chill and cooling sweats

By rising fountains, or as they
Fear'd winter's wastful threats.

Against the broad-spread oak

Each wind in fury bears;

Yet fell their leaves not half so fast
As did the shepherd's tears.

As was his seat so was his gentle heart
Meek and dejected, but his thoughts as high
As those aye-wandering lights, who doth impart
Their beams on us, and heaven still beautify.
Sad was his look-O heavy fate!

That swain should be so sad,

Whose merry notes the forlorn mate
With greatest pleasure clad-

Broke was his tuneful pipe

That charm'd the crystal floods,

And thus his grief took airy wings

And flew about the woods.

"Day, thou art too officious in thy place,
And night, too sparing of a wished stay;

Ye wandering lamps! Oh, be ye fix'd a space,
Some other hemisphere grace with your ray.
Great Phoebus! Daphne is not here,
Nor Hyacinthus fair;

Phoebe! Endymion and thy dear

Hath long since cleft the air.

But ye have surely seen,

Whom we in sorrow miss,

A swain whom Phoebe thought her love,
And Titan deemed his.

"But he is gone; then inwards turn your light,
Behold him there, here never shall you more;
O'er-hang this sad plain with eternal night!
Or change the gaudy green she whilome wore
To fenny black. Hyperion great,

To ashy paleness turn her!

Green well befits a lover's heat,
But black beseems a mourner.

Yet neither this thou canst,

Nor see his second birth,

His brightness blinds thine eye more now,
Then thine did his on Earth.

"Let not a shepherd on our hapless plains
Tune notes of glee, as usèd were of yore:
For Philarete is dead, let mirthful strains
With Philarete cease for evermore!

And if a fellow swain do live

A niggard of his tears,
The shepherdesses all will give
To store him, part of theirs.

Or I would lend him some,
But that the store I have
Will all be spent before I pay
The debt I owe his grave.

"O what is left can make me leave to moan? Or what remains but doth increase it more? Look on his sheep: alas! their master's gone. Look on the place where we two heretofore

With locked arms have vow'd our love,
-Our love which time shall see
In shepherd's songs for every move,
And grace their harmony—

It solitary seems.

Behold our flowery beds;

Their beauties fade, and violets

For sorrow hang their heads.

"T is not a cypress bough, a countenance sad, A mourning garment, wailing elegy,

A standing hearse in sable vesture clad,

A tomb built to his name's eternity,

-Although the shepherds all should strive

By yearly obsequies,

And vow to keep thy fame alive
In spite of destinies-

That can suppress my grief.
All these and more may be,
Yet all in vain to recompence
My greatest loss of thee.

"Cypress may fade, the countenance be changed, A garment rot, an elegy forgotten,

A hearse 'mongst irreligious rites be ranged,

A tomb pluck'd down, or else through age be rotten. All things th' unpartial hand of fate

Can raze out with a thought:

These have a several fixed date,
Which, ended, turn to nought.

Yet shall my truest cause

Of sorrow firmly stay,

When these effects the wings of time
Shall fan and sweep away.

"Look, as a sweet rose fairly budding forth
Bewrays her beauties to th' enamour'd morn,
Until some keen blast from the envious north
Kills the sweet bud that was but newly born;
Or else her rarest smells delighting

Make her herself betray,

Some white and curious hand inviting
To pluck her thence away.

So stands my mournful case,

For had he been less good,

He yet uncorrupt had kept the stock
Whereon he fairly stood.

"Yet though so long he lived not as he might,
He had the time appointed to him given.
Who liveth but the space of one poor night,
His birth, his youth, his age is in that even.
Whoever doth the period see

Of days by Heaven forth plotted,
Dies full of age, as well as he

That had more years allotted

In sad tones then my verse

Shall with incessant tears Bemoan my hapless loss of him,

And not his want of years.

"In deepest passions of my grief-swollen breast (Sweet soul!) this only comfort seizeth me,

That so few years should make thee so much blest

And gave such wings to reach eternity.

Is this to die? No: as a ship

Well built, with easy wind
A lazy hulk doth far out-strip,
And soonest harbour find: .