Great Phoebus! Daphne is not here,
Nor Hyacinthus fair;

Phoebe ! Endymion, and thy dear
Hath long since cleft the air.

But ye hath surely seen

(Whom we in sorrow miss)

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

But he is gone; then inwards turn your light,
Behold him there; here never shall you more;
O'erhang this sad plain with eternal night;
Or change the gaudy green she whilom 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,
Than 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 vowed our love,
(Our love which time shall see
In shepherds' songs for ever move,
And grace their harmony,)

It solitary seems.

Behold our flowery beds;

Their beauties fade, and violets

For sorrow hang their heads.

'Tis 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 recompense
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 plucked down, or else through age be rotten:
All things th' unpartial hand of Fate

Can raze out with a thought,

These have a several fixèd 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 the enamoured morn,
Until some keen blast from the envious North
Kills the sweet bud that was but newly born;

H

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 (uncropped) 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.
Who ever 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 did 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 outstrip,
And soonest harbour find:

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 breer,

'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 tears distil,

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

And ye his sheep (in token of his lack),
Whilom 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 lovèd Muse,

No more shouldst numbers move,

But that his name should ever live,
And after death my love.

This said, he sighed, and with o'erdrownèd eyes
Gazed at the heavens for what he missed on earth,
Then from the ground 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 passed alone.

Was never shepherd loved more dear,

Nor made a truer moan.

William Browne,

1591-1643?

LYCIDAS

["Obsequies to the memorie of Mr. Edward King,
Anno Dom. 1638."]

Yet once more, O ye laurels ! and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,

I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer:
Who would not sing for Lycidas? He knew
Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Begin then, Sisters, of the sacred well,
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth spring;
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the string.
Hence with denial vain, and coy excuse,

So may some gentle Muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn,
And as he passes turn,

And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud!

For we were nursed upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill
Together both, ere the high lawns appeared
Under the opening eyelids of the Morn,
We drove afield, and both together heard
What time the grey-fly winds her sultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night,

Oft till the star that rose at evening bright

Toward heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute;

Tempered to the oaten flute,

Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with cloven heel