The Whole Works of William Browne of Tavistock ... Now first collected and edited, with a memoir of the poet, and notes, by W. Carew Hazlitt, of the Inner Temple |
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 | The Whole Works of William Browne |  |
If Heauen be deafe and will not heare my cries,
But addes new daies to adde new miseries;
Heare then ye troubled Waues and flitting Gales,
That coole the bosomes of the fruitfull Vales!
Lend, one, a flood of teares, the other, winde,
To weepe and sigh that Heauen is so vnkinde!
But if ye will not spare, of all your store
One teare, or sigh, vnto a wretch so poore;
Yet as ye trauell on this spacious Round,
Through Forrests, Mountains, or the Lawny ground,
If't happ' you see a Maid weepe forth her woe,
As I haue done; Oh bid her as ye goe
Not lauish teares! for when her owne are gone,
The world is flinty and will lend her none.
If this be eke deni'd; O hearken then
Each hollow vaulted Rocke, and crooked Den!
And if within your sides one Eccho be
Let her begin to rue my destinie!
And in your clefts her plainings doe not smother,
But let that Eccho teach it to another!
Till round the world in sounding coombe and plaine,
The last of them tell it the first againe:
Of my sad Fate, so shall they neuer lin,
But where one ends, another still begin.
Wretch that I am, my words I vainly waste,
Eccho, of all woes onely speake the last;
And that's enough: for should she vtter all,
As at Medusa's head, each heart would fall
Into a flinty substance, and repine
At no one griefe, except as great as mine.
No carefull Nurse would wet her watchfull eye,
When any pang should gripe her infantry,
Nor though to Nature it obedience gaue,
And kneeld, to doe her Homage, in the graue,
Would she lament, her suckling from her torne:
Scaping by death those torments I haue borne.
But addes new daies to adde new miseries;
Heare then ye troubled Waues and flitting Gales,
That coole the bosomes of the fruitfull Vales!
Lend, one, a flood of teares, the other, winde,
To weepe and sigh that Heauen is so vnkinde!
But if ye will not spare, of all your store
One teare, or sigh, vnto a wretch so poore;
Yet as ye trauell on this spacious Round,
Through Forrests, Mountains, or the Lawny ground,
If't happ' you see a Maid weepe forth her woe,
As I haue done; Oh bid her as ye goe
Not lauish teares! for when her owne are gone,
The world is flinty and will lend her none.
If this be eke deni'd; O hearken then
Each hollow vaulted Rocke, and crooked Den!
171
Let her begin to rue my destinie!
And in your clefts her plainings doe not smother,
But let that Eccho teach it to another!
Till round the world in sounding coombe and plaine,
The last of them tell it the first againe:
Of my sad Fate, so shall they neuer lin,
But where one ends, another still begin.
Wretch that I am, my words I vainly waste,
Eccho, of all woes onely speake the last;
And that's enough: for should she vtter all,
As at Medusa's head, each heart would fall
Into a flinty substance, and repine
At no one griefe, except as great as mine.
No carefull Nurse would wet her watchfull eye,
When any pang should gripe her infantry,
Nor though to Nature it obedience gaue,
And kneeld, to doe her Homage, in the graue,
Would she lament, her suckling from her torne:
Scaping by death those torments I haue borne.
| The Whole Works of William Browne | |