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,
Methinks no April shower

Embroider should the earth,

But briny teares distil,

Since Flora's beauties shall no more
Be honour'd by thy quill.

"And ye, his sheep, in token of his lack,
Whilome the fairest flock on all the plain,
Yean never lamb, but be it clothed in black.
Ye shady sycamores, when any swain

To carve his name upon your rind

Doth come, where his doth stand,
Shed drops, if he be so unkind
To raze it with his hand.

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
Where mirthful swains abode;

And as he spent the day,

The night he past alone;

Was never shepherd loved more dear,
Nor made a truer moan.

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
By her matchless beauty known.

All the plain by her bright eyes
Shined, while she did here remain:
Now her eye her light denies,
Darkness seems to hide the plain.

Phoebus now seems lesser light
To th' unhappy vale to send,

Having lost more by her flight,
Than he doth his sister lend.

Cynthia yields night fewer rays,
Since the Sun her fewer yields;
He has wanted for the days,
Since her wanted have the fields.

Mountains never known to rue,
Rocks that strangers were to woes,
Since her absence cleave in two,
And their ruin'd hearts disclose.

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,
Spring and Summer seem'd to last:
Since she left us, all the year
Autumn seems and Winter's blast.

While she graced us and these plains,
Foreign swains of her did hear;
Now she graces foreign swains,
We envy their fortunes there;
Fame, where ever she remains,
Sounds her wonder everywhere.

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,
Turn'd is in night our day.

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,
It was for her; for her trees dropt forth pearls.
That proud and stately courts

Did envy these our shades and calm resorts,
It was for her: and she is gone, O woe!

Woods cut again do grow,

Bud doth the rose, and daisy, winter done,
But we once dead do no more see the sun.

Whose name shall now make ring

The echoes? of whom shall the nymphets sing?
Whose heavenly voice, whose soul-invading strains,
Shall fill with joy the plains?

What hair, what eyes, can make the morn in east
Weep that a fairer riseth in the west?

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
Were not yet equal, nor grief to my loss.

Yet of you briny showers

Which I here pour, may spring as many flowers,

As come of those which fell from Helen's eyes;
And when ye do arise,

May every leaf in sable letters bear

The doleful cause for which ye spring up here.