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 |  |
O what a rapture haue I gotten now!
That age of gold, this of the louely brow
Haue drawne me from my Song! I onward run
Cleane from the end to which I first begun.
But ye, the heauenly creatures of the West
In whom the vertues and the graces rest,
Pardon! that I haue run astray so long,
And grow so tedious in so rude a song,
If you your selues should come to adde one grace
Vnto a pleasant Groue or such like place,
Where here the curious cutting of a hedge:
There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge:
Here the fine setting of well shading trees:
The walkes there mounting vp by small degrees,
The grauell and the greene so equall lye,
It, with the rest, drawes on your lingring eye:
Here the sweet smels that doe perfume the ayre,
Arising from the infinite repaire
Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price,
(As if it were another Paradice)
So please the smelling sense, that you are faine
Where last you walk'd to turne and walke againe.
There the small Birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a Spring that smileth as she floats:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing goe:
Here further downe an ouer-arched Alley
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spie at end thereof a standing Lake,
Where some ingenious Artist striues to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of Lead
Through Birds of earth most liuely fashioned)
To counterfeit and mocke the Siluans all,
In singing well their owne set Madrigall.
This with no small delight retaines your eare,
And makes you think none blest but who liue there.
Then in another place the fruits that be
In gallant clusters decking each good tree,
Inuite your hand to crop some from the stem,
And liking one, taste euery sort of them:
Then to the arbours walke, then to the bowres,
Thence to the walkes againe, thence to the flowres,
Then to the Birds, and to the cleare spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sense.
Here one walkes oft, and yet anew begin'th,
As if it were some hidden Labyrinth;
So loath to part, and so content to stay,
That when the Gardner knocks for you away,
It grieues you so to leaue the pleasures in it,
That you could wish that you had neuer seene it:
Blame me not then, if while to you I told
The happinesse our fathers clipt of old,
The meere imagination of their blisse
So rapt my thoughts, and made me sing amisse.
And still the more they ran on those dayes worth,
The more vnwilling was I to come forth.
O! if the apprehension ioy vs so,
What would the action in a humane show?
Such were the Shepherds (to all goodnesse bent)
About whose Thorps that night curs'd Limos went.
Where he had learn'd that next day all the Swaines,
That any sheepe fed on the fertill plaines,
That feast of Pales Goddesse of their grounds
Did meane to celebrate. Fitly this sounds,
He thought, to what he formerly intended,
His stealth should by their absence be befriended:
For whilst they in their offrings busied were,
He 'mongst the flocks might range with lesser feare.
How to contriue his stealth he spent the night.
That age of gold, this of the louely brow
Haue drawne me from my Song! I onward run
Cleane from the end to which I first begun.
But ye, the heauenly creatures of the West
In whom the vertues and the graces rest,
Pardon! that I haue run astray so long,
And grow so tedious in so rude a song,
If you your selues should come to adde one grace
40
Where here the curious cutting of a hedge:
There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge:
Here the fine setting of well shading trees:
The walkes there mounting vp by small degrees,
The grauell and the greene so equall lye,
It, with the rest, drawes on your lingring eye:
Here the sweet smels that doe perfume the ayre,
Arising from the infinite repaire
Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price,
(As if it were another Paradice)
So please the smelling sense, that you are faine
Where last you walk'd to turne and walke againe.
There the small Birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a Spring that smileth as she floats:
For in her face a many dimples show,
And often skips as it did dancing goe:
Here further downe an ouer-arched Alley
That from a hill goes winding in a valley,
You spie at end thereof a standing Lake,
Where some ingenious Artist striues to make
The water (brought in turning pipes of Lead
Through Birds of earth most liuely fashioned)
To counterfeit and mocke the Siluans all,
In singing well their owne set Madrigall.
This with no small delight retaines your eare,
And makes you think none blest but who liue there.
Then in another place the fruits that be
In gallant clusters decking each good tree,
Inuite your hand to crop some from the stem,
And liking one, taste euery sort of them:
Then to the arbours walke, then to the bowres,
Thence to the walkes againe, thence to the flowres,
Then to the Birds, and to the cleare spring thence,
Now pleasing one, and then another sense.
Here one walkes oft, and yet anew begin'th,
41
So loath to part, and so content to stay,
That when the Gardner knocks for you away,
It grieues you so to leaue the pleasures in it,
That you could wish that you had neuer seene it:
Blame me not then, if while to you I told
The happinesse our fathers clipt of old,
The meere imagination of their blisse
So rapt my thoughts, and made me sing amisse.
And still the more they ran on those dayes worth,
The more vnwilling was I to come forth.
O! if the apprehension ioy vs so,
What would the action in a humane show?
Such were the Shepherds (to all goodnesse bent)
About whose Thorps that night curs'd Limos went.
Where he had learn'd that next day all the Swaines,
That any sheepe fed on the fertill plaines,
That feast of Pales Goddesse of their grounds
Did meane to celebrate. Fitly this sounds,
He thought, to what he formerly intended,
His stealth should by their absence be befriended:
For whilst they in their offrings busied were,
He 'mongst the flocks might range with lesser feare.
How to contriue his stealth he spent the night.
| The Whole Works of William Browne | |