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 |  |
Describing Foulnesse, pardon if I erre,
Ye Shepherds Daughters, and ye gentle Swaines!
My Muse would gladly chaunt more louely straines:
Yet since on miry grounds she trode, for doubt
Of sinking, all in haste, thus wades she out.
As when great Neptune in his height of pride
The inland creeks fils with a high Spring-tyde,
Great sholes of fish, among the Oysters hye,
Which by a quicke ebbe, on the shores, left dry,
The fishes yawne, the Oysters gapen wide:
So broad her mouth was: As she stood and cride,
She tore her eluish knots of haire, as blacke
And full of dust as any Collyers sacke.
Her eyes vnlike, were like her body right,
Squint and misse-shapen, one dun, t'other white.
Ye Shepherds Daughters, and ye gentle Swaines!
My Muse would gladly chaunt more louely straines:
Yet since on miry grounds she trode, for doubt
Of sinking, all in haste, thus wades she out.
As when great Neptune in his height of pride
The inland creeks fils with a high Spring-tyde,
Great sholes of fish, among the Oysters hye,
Which by a quicke ebbe, on the shores, left dry,
The fishes yawne, the Oysters gapen wide:
So broad her mouth was: As she stood and cride,
She tore her eluish knots of haire, as blacke
And full of dust as any Collyers sacke.
Her eyes vnlike, were like her body right,
Squint and misse-shapen, one dun, t'other white.
| The Whole Works of William Browne | |