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 |  |
Ye truest, fairest, louelyest Nymphes that can
Out of your eyes lend fire Promethian,
All-beautious Ladies, loue-alluring Dames,
That on the banckes of Isca, Humber, Thames,
By your encouragement can make a Swaine
Climbe by his Song where none but soules attaine:
And by the gracefull reading of our lines
Renew our heat to further braue designes.
(You, by whose meanes my Muse thus boldly sayes:
Though she doe sing of Shepherds loues and layes,
And flagging weakly low gets not on wing
To second that of Hellens rauishing:
Nor hath the loue nor beauty of a Queene
My subiect grac'd, as other workes haue beene;
Yet not to doe their age nor ours a wrong,
Though Queenes, nay Goddesses fam'd Homers song):
Mine hath beene tun'd and heard by beauties more
Then all the Poets that haue liu'd before.
Not cause it is more worth, but it doth fall
That Nature now is turn'd a prodigall,
And on this age so much perfection spends,
That to her last of treasure it extends;
For all the ages that are slid away
Had not so many beauties as this day.
Out of your eyes lend fire Promethian,
All-beautious Ladies, loue-alluring Dames,
That on the banckes of Isca, Humber, Thames,
By your encouragement can make a Swaine
Climbe by his Song where none but soules attaine:
And by the gracefull reading of our lines
Renew our heat to further braue designes.
(You, by whose meanes my Muse thus boldly sayes:
Though she doe sing of Shepherds loues and layes,
And flagging weakly low gets not on wing
To second that of Hellens rauishing:
Nor hath the loue nor beauty of a Queene
My subiect grac'd, as other workes haue beene;
Yet not to doe their age nor ours a wrong,
Though Queenes, nay Goddesses fam'd Homers song):
Mine hath beene tun'd and heard by beauties more
Then all the Poets that haue liu'd before.
Not cause it is more worth, but it doth fall
That Nature now is turn'd a prodigall,
And on this age so much perfection spends,
That to her last of treasure it extends;
For all the ages that are slid away
Had not so many beauties as this day.
| The Whole Works of William Browne | |