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 |  |
West, in Apollo's course to Tagus streame,
Crown'd with a siluer circling Diadem
Of wet exhaled mists, there stood a pile
Of aged Rocks (torne from the neighbour Ile
And girt with waues) against whose naked brest
The surges tilted, on his snowie crest
The towring Falcon whilome built, and Kings
Stroue for that Eirie, on whose scaling wings,
Monarchs, in gold refin'd as much would lay
As might a month their Army Royall pay.
Braue Birds they were, whose quick-self-less-'ning kin
Still won the girlonds from the Peregrin.
Not Cerna Ile in Affricks siluer maine,
Nor lustfull-bloody-Tereus Thracian straine,
Nor any other Lording of the ayre
Durst with this Eirie for their wing compare.
About his sides a thousand Seaguls bred,
The Meuy and the Halcyon famosed
For colours rare, and for the peacefull Seas
Round the Sicilian coast, her brooding dayes.
Puffins (as thicke as Starlings in a Fen)
Were fetcht from thence: there sate the Pewet hen,
And in the clefts the Martin built his nest.
But those by this curst caitife dispossest
Of roost and nest, the least; of life, the most:
All left that place, and sought a safer coast.
In stead of them the Caterpiller hants,
And Cancre-worme among the tender plants,
That here and there in nooks and corners grew;
Of Cormorants and Locusts not a few;
The cramming Rauen, and a hundred more
Deuouring creatures; yet when from the shore
Limos came wading (as he easily might
Except at high tydes) all would take their flight,
Or hide themselues in some deepe hole or other,
Lest one deuourer should deuoure another.
Crown'd with a siluer circling Diadem
Of wet exhaled mists, there stood a pile
Of aged Rocks (torne from the neighbour Ile
And girt with waues) against whose naked brest
The surges tilted, on his snowie crest
The towring Falcon whilome built, and Kings
Stroue for that Eirie, on whose scaling wings,
Monarchs, in gold refin'd as much would lay
As might a month their Army Royall pay.
Braue Birds they were, whose quick-self-less-'ning kin
Still won the girlonds from the Peregrin.
Not Cerna Ile in Affricks siluer maine,
Nor lustfull-bloody-Tereus Thracian straine,
Nor any other Lording of the ayre
Durst with this Eirie for their wing compare.
About his sides a thousand Seaguls bred,
The Meuy and the Halcyon famosed
For colours rare, and for the peacefull Seas
Round the Sicilian coast, her brooding dayes.
Puffins (as thicke as Starlings in a Fen)
Were fetcht from thence: there sate the Pewet hen,
And in the clefts the Martin built his nest.
But those by this curst caitife dispossest
Of roost and nest, the least; of life, the most:
All left that place, and sought a safer coast.
In stead of them the Caterpiller hants,
And Cancre-worme among the tender plants,
That here and there in nooks and corners grew;
Of Cormorants and Locusts not a few;
The cramming Rauen, and a hundred more
Deuouring creatures; yet when from the shore
Limos came wading (as he easily might
Except at high tydes) all would take their flight,
184
Lest one deuourer should deuoure another.
| The Whole Works of William Browne | |