So Philarete fled, Quick was his passage given, When others must have longer time To make them fit for Heaven. "Then not for thee these briny tears are spent, But as the nightingale against the brier, 'Tis for myself I moan, and do lament, Not that thou left'st the world, but left'st me here: Here, where without thee all delights Fail of their pleasing power; All glorious days seem ugly nights, Embroider should the earth, But briny teares distil, Since Flora's beauties shall no more "And ye, his sheep, in token of his lack, To carve his name upon your rind Doth come, where his doth stand, And thou, my loved Muse No more shouldst numbers move, But that his name should ever live, And after death my love." This said, he sigh'd, and with o'er-drowned eyes Gazed on the Heavens for what he miss'd on Earth; Then from the earth full sadly 'gan arise As far from future hope, as present mirth; Unto his cote with heavy pace As ever sorrow trod, He went, with mind no more to trace And as he spent the day, The night he past alone; Was never shepherd loved more dear, WILLIAM BASSE. (1583?-1653?.) LXXXVIII. CLORUS' SONG. William Basse, one of the feebler of Spenser's imitators, published Three Pastoral Elegies of Anander, Anetor, and Muridella (1602), and left at his death the manuscript of nine other Eclogues, from the fifth of which this extract is taken. It is a lament for the departure from England of Mary, Countess of Pembroke, under the name of Poemenarcha, at her visit to Spa in 1616. Basse is perhaps better known as the author of an Elegy on Shakespeare, and of an Angler's Song, quoted in Walton's Compleat Angler. His poems have been recently collected by Mr. R. Warwick Bond. SILLY Swain, sit down and weep, Weep that she from hence is gone; She, of all that follow'd sheep All the plain by her bright eyes Phoebus now seems lesser light Having lost more by her flight, Cynthia yields night fewer rays, Mountains never known to rue, Fields are left to winter's wrack; Sheep that share the shepherd's woe Change their hue to mourning black, Once as white as morning's snow. Earth in withering weeds doth mourn, Flowers droop their heads dismay'd, Trees let fall their leaves, that borne Were, her beauteous brows to shade. All the year, while she was here, While she graced us and these plains, WILLIAM DRUMMOND OF HAW THORNDEN. (1585-1649.) LXXXIX. DAMON'S LAMENT. A fragment from a poem first printed in Poems: Amorous, Funeral, Divine, Pastoral (1616). Drummond's works have been edited by Mr. W. B. Turnbull in The Library of Old Authors, and by Mr. W. C. Ward in The Muses' Library. THIS world is made a Hell, Deprived of all that in it did excel. O Pan, Pan, winter is fallen in our May, Forsake thy pipe, a sceptre take to thee, Thy locks dis-garland, thou black Jove shall be. The flocks do leave the meads, And, loathing three-leaved grass, hold up their heads; The streams not glide now with a gentle roar, Nor birds sing as before; Hills stand with clouds like mourners veil'd in black And owls upon our roofs foretell our wrack. That Zephyr every year So soon was heard to sigh in forest here, It was for her; that, wrapp'd in gowns of green, Meads were so early seen, That in the saddest months oft sang the merles, Did envy these our shades and calm resorts, Woods cut again do grow, Bud doth the rose, and daisy, winter done, Whose name shall now make ring The echoes? of whom shall the nymphets sing? What hair, what eyes, can make the morn in east Fair sun, post still away, No music here is found thy course to stay. Sweet Hybla swarms, with wormwood fill your bowers, Gone is the flower of flowers. Blush no more, rose, nor, lily, pale remain, Dead is that beauty which yours late did stain. Ah me! to wail my plight Why have not I as many eyes as night; Or as that shepherd which Jove's love did keep, That I still, still may weep? But though I had, my tears unto my cross Yet of you briny showers Which I here pour, may spring as many flowers, As come of those which fell from Helen's eyes; May every leaf in sable letters bear The doleful cause for which ye spring up here. |