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 |  |
ON ONE DROWNED IN THE SNOWE.
Within a fleece of Silent waters drown'd,
Before I met with death a graue I found;
That which exilde my life from her sweet home,
For griefe streight froze it selfe into a Tombe.
One onely element my fate thought meet
To be my Death, Graue, Tombe, & Winding Sheet;
Phœbus himselfe my Epitaph had writ;
But blotting many, ere he thought one fit,
He wrote vntill my Tombe & Graue were gone,
And 'twas an Epitaph, that I had none;
For euery man that past along the waye
Without a Sculpture read, that there I laye.
Before I met with death a graue I found;
That which exilde my life from her sweet home,
For griefe streight froze it selfe into a Tombe.
One onely element my fate thought meet
To be my Death, Graue, Tombe, & Winding Sheet;
Phœbus himselfe my Epitaph had writ;
But blotting many, ere he thought one fit,
He wrote vntill my Tombe & Graue were gone,
And 'twas an Epitaph, that I had none;
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Without a Sculpture read, that there I laye.
Here now, the second time, entomb'd I lie,
And thus much haue the best of Destinye:
Corruption (from which onely one was free)
Deuour'd my grave, but did not feed on me.
My first Graue tooke me from the race of men;
My last shall giue me back to life agen.
And thus much haue the best of Destinye:
Corruption (from which onely one was free)
Deuour'd my grave, but did not feed on me.
My first Graue tooke me from the race of men;
My last shall giue me back to life agen.
| The Whole Works of William Browne | |