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 |  |
Betweene two rocks (immortall, without mother)
That stand as if out-facing one another,
There ran a Creeke vp, intricate and blinde,
As if the waters hid them from the winde;
Which neuer wash'd but at a higher tyde
The frizled coats which doe the Mountaines hide;
Where neuer gale was longer knowne to stay
Then from the smooth waue it had swept away
The new diuorced leaues, that from each side
Left the thicke boughes to dance out with the tide.
At further end the Creeke, a stately Wood
Gaue a kinde shadow (to the brackish Flood)
Made vp of trees, not lesse kend by each skiffe
Then that sky-scaling Pike of Tenerife,
Vpon whose tops the Herneshew bred her young,
And hoary mosse vpon their branches hung:
Whose rugged rindes sufficient were to show
Without their height, what time they gan to grow.
And if dry eld by wrinckled skin appeares,
None could allot them lesse then Nestor's yeeres.
As vnder their command the thronged Creeke
Ran lessened vp. Here did the Shepherd seeke
Where he his little Boat might safely hide,
Till it was fraught with what the world beside
Could not outvalew; nor giue equall weight
Though in the time when Greece was at her height.
That stand as if out-facing one another,
There ran a Creeke vp, intricate and blinde,
As if the waters hid them from the winde;
Which neuer wash'd but at a higher tyde
The frizled coats which doe the Mountaines hide;
Where neuer gale was longer knowne to stay
Then from the smooth waue it had swept away
97
Left the thicke boughes to dance out with the tide.
At further end the Creeke, a stately Wood
Gaue a kinde shadow (to the brackish Flood)
Made vp of trees, not lesse kend by each skiffe
Then that sky-scaling Pike of Tenerife,
Vpon whose tops the Herneshew bred her young,
And hoary mosse vpon their branches hung:
Whose rugged rindes sufficient were to show
Without their height, what time they gan to grow.
And if dry eld by wrinckled skin appeares,
None could allot them lesse then Nestor's yeeres.
As vnder their command the thronged Creeke
Ran lessened vp. Here did the Shepherd seeke
Where he his little Boat might safely hide,
Till it was fraught with what the world beside
Could not outvalew; nor giue equall weight
Though in the time when Greece was at her height.
| The Whole Works of William Browne | |