The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper

When sighes as frequent were as various sights, That any one, which lov'd him, hated me,
When Hope lay bed-rid, and all pleasures dying, Might dearly love me, for lamenting him ;
When Envie wept,

Alas, my plaint,
And Comfort slept,

In such constraint,
When Cruelty itselfe sat almost crying ;

Breakes forth in rage, that thoughe my passions Nought being heard but what the minde affrights: swimme,

When Autumn had disrob'd the Summer's pride, Yet are they drowned ere they landed be.

Then England's honour, Europe's wonder dide. Imperfect lines : oh happy were I hurl'd O saddest straine that ere the Muses sung!

And cut from life, as England from the world. A text of woe for griefe to comment on;

O! happier had we beene, if we had beene
Teares, sighs and sobs, give passage to my tongue, Nerer made happie by enjoying thee,
Or I shal spend you till the last is gone.

Where hath the glorious eye of Heaven seene
And then my hart, in flames of burning love, A spectacle of greater miserie ?
Wanting his moisture, shall to cinders turne, Time, turn thy course! and bring againe the
But first by me,

spring! Bequeathed be,

Breake Nature's lawes! search the records of old ! To strew the place, wherein bis sacred urne

If aught e're fell
Shall be enclos'd. This inight in many more

Might paralel
The like effect: (who would not doe it?) when Sad Albion's case : then note when I unfold
No grave befits him, but the harts of men. Wbat seas of sorrow she is plunged in:

Where stormes of woe so mainly have beset ber, The man whose masse of sorrowes have been such,

She hath no place for worse, nor hope for better.
That, by their weight laid on each severall part,
His fountaines are so drie, he but as much Brittaine was whilome knowne (by more than fame)
As one poore drop hath left, to ease his hart : To be one of the Islands Fortunate:
Why should he keepe it? since the time doth call What franticke man would give her now that name,
That he n'ere better can bestow it in?

Lying so ruefull and disconsolate?
If so he feares,

Hath not her watrie zone in murmuring,
That other teares

Fil'd every shoare with ecchoes of her crie?
In greater number greatest prizes winne,

Yes, Thetis raves,
Know, none gives more than he who giveth all :

And bids her waves
Then he which hath but one poore teare in store, Bring all the nimphes within her emperie,
Oh let him spend that drop and weepe no more! To be assistant in her sorrowing.

See where they sadly sit on Isis' shore,
Why flowres not Helicon beyond her strands?

And rend their haires as they would joy no more. Is Henrie dead, and doe the Muses sleepe? Alas! I see each one amazed stands, Shallow foords mutter, silent are the deepe: Faine would they tell their griefes, but know not

THIRSIS'S PRAISE TO HIS MISTRES3.
where,
All are so full, nought can augment their store.

BY W. BROWNE.
Then how should they
Their griefes displey

FROM A COLLECTION OF POEMS, CALLED ENGLAND'S To men so cloide they faine would heare no more,

HELICON; OR, THE MUSES HARMONY. Though blaming those whose plaints they cannot heare?

On a bill that grac'd the plaine
And with this wish their passions I allow,

Thirsis sate, a comely swaine,
May that Muse never speake that's silent now! Comelier swaine nere grac'd a hill:

Whilst his flock, that wandred nie,
Is Henrie dead ? alas! and doe I live

Cropt the greene grasse busilie;
To sing a scrich-owle's note that he is dead ?

Thus he tuu'd his oaten quill :
If any one a fitter theame can give,
Come, give it now, or never to be read:

Ver hath made the plesant field
But let bim see it doe of horrour taste,

Many several odours yeeld,
Anguish, destruction; could it rend in sunder,

Odours aromatical:
With fearefull grones,

From faire Astra's cherrie lip,
The sence!esse stones,

Sweeter smells for ever skip,
Yet should we hardly be inforc'd to wonder,

They in pleasing passen al). Our former griefes would so exceed their last :

Leavie groves now mainely rừng, Time cannot make our sorrowes aught com

With each sweet bird's sonnetting, pleater,

Notes that make the ecchoes long: Nor add one griefe to make our mourning greater.

But when Astra tunes her voice, England stood ne're engirt with waves till now,

All the mirthful birds rejoice, Till now it held part with the continent,

And are list'ning to her song. Aye me! some one, in pittie show me how

Fairely spreads the damaske rose, I might in dolefull numbers so lament,

Whese rare mixture doth disclose

Beauties, penrills cannot faine. the Bodleian library, and is inserted here on ac

Yet, if Astra passe the bush, count of the variations from that printed in the first

Roses have been seen to blush. book of Britannia's Pastorals.

She doth all their beauties staine.

Phæbus shining bright in skie,

Whereby you may consider well, Gilds the floods, beates mountaines hie That plain simplicity doth dwell With his beames' all quick’ning fire:

At Lydford, without bravery. Astra's eyes (most sparkling ones)

And in the town both young and grave, Strikcs a heat in hearts of stones,

Do love the naked truth to have, And enflames them with desire.

No cloak to hide their knavery. Fields are blest with flowrie wreath,

The people all within this clime, Ayre is blest when she doth breath;

Are frozen in the winter time, Birds make happy ev'ry grove,

For sure I do not fain; She each bird when she doth sing;

And when the summer is begun,
Phæbus' heate to Earth doth bring,

They lye like silk-worms in the sun,
She makes marble fall in love.

And come to life again.

One told me in king Cæsar's time, Those blessinges of the Earth we swaines do call,

The town was built with stone and lime,
Astra can blesse those blessings, Earth and all.

But sure the walls were clay,
And they are fal’n, for aught I see,
And since the houses are got free,

The town is run away.
A POEM,

Oh! Cæsar, if thou there didst reign,
ATTRIBUTED BY PRINCE, IN HIS WORTHIES OF DEVON, While one house stands come there again ;
TO WILLIAM BROWNE.

Come quickly while there is one.

If thou stay but a little fit, I oft have heard of Lydford law,

But five years more, they will comnit How, in the morn, they hang and draw,

The whole town to a prison. And sit in judgment after.

'To see it thus much griev'd was I, At first I wonder'd at it much,

The proverb saith, • Sorrows be dry,"
But since I find the reason's such,

So was I at the matter.
As it deserves no laughter.

Now by good luck, I know not how,
They have a castle on a hill,

There thither came a strange stray cow, I took it for an old wind-mill,

And we had milk and water. The ranes blown down by weather:

To nine good stomachs, with our wigg. To lye therein one night, 'lis guess'd,

At last we got a roasting pigg, 'Twere better to be ston'd and press'd,

This dyet was our bounds, Or hang'd, now choose you whether.

And this was just as if 'twere known, Ten men less room within this cave,

a pound of butter had been thrown, Than five mice in a lanthorn have,

Among a pack of hounds. The keepers they are sly ones;

One glass of drink I got by chance, If any could devise by art,

'Twas claret when it was in France, To get it up into a cart,

But now from it much wider; 'T'were fit to carry lyons.

I think a man might make as good

With green crabs boyld, and Brazil wood, When I beheld it, Lord! thought I,

And half a pint of cyder.
What justice and what clemency

I kiss'd the mayor's hand of the town,
Hath Lydford! When saw all,
I know none gladly there would stay,

Who, though he weare no scarlet gown,

Honours the rose and thistle.
But rather hang out of the way,

A piece of coral to the mace,
Than tarry for a tryal.

Which there I saw to serve in place,
The prince an hundred pounds hath sent

Would make a good child's whistle.
To mend the leads, and planchens rent,

At sick o'clock I came away,
Within this living tomb,

And pray'd for those that were to stay
Some forty-five pounds more had paid

Within a place so arrant.
The debts of all that shall be laid

Wide and ope the winds so roure,
Ibere till the day of doom.

By God's grace I'll come there no more,
One lyes there for a seam of malt,

Unless by some Tynn warrant.
Another for a peck of salt,

Two sureties for a noble.
If this be true, or else false news,
You may go ask of master Crews,
John Vaughan, or John Duble?.

RICHARD THE THIRD,
More, to these men that lye in lurch,

HIS CHARACTER, LEGEND, AND TRAGEDY, A POEM, 4to. Here is a bridge, there is a church ;

1614. [AMONGST OTHER VERSES BY CHASMAN, BEN Seven ashes, and one oak;

JOHNSON, &c.] Three houses standing, and ten down.

TO HIS WORTHY AND INGENIOUS FRIEND THE AUTHOR. They say the parson bath a gowne,

So farre as can a swayne (who than a rounde But I saw ne'er a cloak.

Un oaten-pipe no further boasts his skill)

I dare to censure the shrill trumpets' sound, ! The steward. ? Attornies of the court.

Or other music of the sacred hil:

PREFIXED TO

The popular applause hath not so fell

(Like Nile's lowd cataract) possest mine ears But others' songs I can distinguish well

And chant their praise, despised vertue rears: Nor shall thy buskin'd Muse be heard alone

In stately pallaces; the shady woods By me shall learn't, and ecchoes one by one Teach it the hils, and they the silver floods. Our learned shepheards that have us'd to fore Their hasty gifts in notes that wooe the plaines, By rural ditties will be known no more;

But reach at fame by such as are thy straines. And I would gladly (if the sisters spring

Had me inabled) beare a part with thee, And for sweet groves, of brave' heroes sing, But since it fits not my weake melodie, It shall suffice that thou such means do'st give, That my harsh lines among the best may live. W. BROWNE, Int. Temp.

MR. WILLIAM DRAYTON, TO HIS NOBLE FRIEND MR. WILLIAM BROWNE;

OF THE EVIL TIME.

DEAR friend, be silent and with patience see,
What this mad time's catastrophe will be;
The world's first wisemen certainly mistook
Themselves, and spoke things quite beside the
book,

And that which they have said of God, untrue,
Or else expect strange judgment to ensue.

This isle is a mere Bedlam, and therein,
We all lie raving mad in every sin,
And him the wisest most men use to call,
Who doth (alone) the maddest thing of all;
He whom the master of all wisdom found,
For a mark'd fool, and so did him propound,
The time we live in, to that pass is brought,
That only he a censor now is thought;
And that base villain, (not an age yet gone)
Which a good man would not have look'd upon,
Now like a god with divine worship follow'd,
And all his actions are accounted hallow'd.

This world of ours, thus runneth upon wheels, Set on the head, bolt upright with her heels; Which makes me think of what the Ethnics told Th' opinion, the Pythagorists uphold, That the immortal soul doth transmigrate; Then I suppose by the strong power of fate, That those which at confused Babel were,

And since that time now many a lingering year, Through fools, and beasts, and lunatics have past,

Are here imbodied in this age at last,

And though so long we from that time be gone,
Yet taste we still of that confusion.

For certainly there's scarce one found that now
Knows what t'approve, or what to disallow,
All arsey-versey, nothing is it's own,

But to our proverb, all turn'd upside down;
To do in time, is to do out of season,
And that speeds best, that's done the farthest

from reason,

He's high'st that's low'st, he's surest in that's out, He hits the next way that goes farth'st about, Quere? braver!

He getteth up unlike to rise at all,
He slips to ground as much unlike to fall;
Which doth inforce me partly to prefer
The opinion of that mad philosopher,

Who taught, that those all-framing powers above,
(As 'tis suppos'd) made man not out of love
To him at all, but only as a thing,

To make them sport with, which the use to bring,
As men do monkies, puppets, and such tools
Of laughter: so men are but the gods' fools.
Such are by titles lifted to the sky,

As wherefore no man knows, God scarcely why;
The virtuous man depressed like a stone
For that dull sot to raise himself upon;
He who ne'er thing yet worthy man durst do,
Never durst look upon his country's foe,
Nor durst attempt that action which might get
Him fame with men or higher might him set
Than the base beggar (rightly if compar'd);
This drone yet never brave attempt that dar'd,
Yet dares be knighted, and from thence dares
grow

To any title empire can bestow;

For this believe, that impudence is now
A cardinal vertue, and men it allow
Reverence, nay more, men study and invent
New ways, nay glory to be impudent.

Into the clouds the Devil lately got,
And by the moisture doubting much the rot,
A medicine took to make him purge and cast;
Which in a short time began to work so fast,
That he fell to't, and from his backside flew
A rout of rascal a rude ribald crew
Of base plebeians, which no sooner light
Upon the Earth, but with a sudden flight
They spread this isle; and as Deucalion once
Over his shoulder back, by throwing stones
They became men, even so these beasts became
Owners of titles from an obscure name.

He that by riot, of a mighty rent, Hath his late goodly patrimony spent, And into base and wilful begg`ry run, This man as he some glorious act had done, With some great pension, or rich gift reliev'd, When he that hath by industry achiev'd Some noble thing, contemned and disgrac'd, In the forlorn hope of times is plac'd. As though that God had carelessly left all That being hath on this terrestrial ball, To Fortune's guiding, nor would have to do With man, nor aught that doth belong him to, Or at the least God having given more Power to the Devil, than he did of yore, Over this world: the fiend as he doth hate The virtuous man; maligning his estate, All noble things, and would have by his will, To be damn'd with him, using all his skill, By his black hellish ministers to vex All worthy men, and strangly to perplex Their constancy, thereby them so to fright, That they should yeeld them wholly to his might. But of these things I vainly do but tell,

Where Hell is Heaven, and Heav'n is now turn'd Hell;

Where that which lately blasphemy hath been,
Now godliness, much less accounted sin;

| And a long while I greatly marvel'd why
Buffoons and bawds should hourly multiply,
Till that of late I constru'd it, that they
To present thrift had got the perfect way,

When I concluded by their odious crimes,
It was for us no thriving in these times.

As men oft laugh at little babes, when they
Hap to behold some strange thing in their play,
To see them on the sudden strucken sad,
As in their fancy some strange forms they had,
Which they by pointing with their fingers show,
Angry at our capacities so slow,

That by their count'nance we no sooner learn
To see the wonder which they so diseern;
So the celestial powers do sit and smile
At innocent and virtuous men, the while
They stand amazed at the world o'er-gone,
So far beyond imagination,

With slavish baseness, that they silent sit

Pointing like children in describing it.

Then, noble friend, the next way to controul:
These worldly crosses, is to arm thy soul
With constant patience: and with thoughts as high
As these below, and poor, winged to fly
To that exalted stand, whither yet they
Are got with pain, that sit out of the way
Of this ignoble age, which raiseth none
But such as think their black damnation
To be a trifle; such, so ill, that when
They are advanc'd, those few poor honest men
That yet are living, into search do run
To find what mischief they have lately done,
Which so prefers them; say thou he doth rise,
That maketh virtue his chief exercise.

And in this base world come whatever shall,
He's worth lamenting, that for her doth fall.

A GLOSSARY OF OBSOLETE WORDS.

} afraid.

A.
Adrad,
Adread,
Affese, to affright.
Agryze, horror, fear.
Algate, every way, wholly.
Apparceived, perceived, beheld.
Assoile, free.
Astoniod, astonished.
Ay, always,

B.
Balke, a ridge of land between two furrows.
Beheet, to promise.
Bet, better.
Bewraye, to discover, to betray.
Blent, blind, blinded.
Blet, bleated, like a lamb.
Blist, blessed.
Blive, ready, readily.
Breere, a brier.
Brent, burnt.
Brooch, a jewel

C.
Carke, care.
Cheese, to chuse.
Chiertee, joy.
Clipped, possessed, enjoyed, embraced.
Cosset, a lamb brought up by band.
Crowd, a fudle.
Cure, care.

D.
Deal, as every deal, entirely, every bit.
Dell, a valley.
Dight, dressed, decked, adorned, prepared.

E
Est, again.
Eftsoons, soon afterwards.
Eke, also, likewise.
Eld, old, old age.
Eritage, inheritance.

F.
Fallace, decript, disappointinent.
Feere, company, a companion.
Ferd, afraid.
Fet, fetched, to fetch.
Fier, fire.
Flawne, a custard.

G.
Gybe, to sneer.
Gybing, -neering.

I.
Janiveere, January.
Jouisance, playfulness, merriment, festivity.

K.
Kid, to acquire, to engrosso
Knap, a hillock.
Kythe, to cast, to bestow.

L.
I aire, a barn, a stall for cattle.
Losch, a physician, a surgeun.

Leefe, dear, beloved.
Leere, to learn.
Leese, to lose.
lepry, a leprosy.
Lever, rather.
Lin, to stop, to give over, to leave oft.

M.
Mesel, a leper.
Mickle,

2
Mockhill, much.
Muckle,
Minstralsie, instrumental barınony.
Mot, must.
Mozor, a maple cup.
Mucke, dirt.

N.
Nathless, nevertheless.

P.
Percase, perhaps, because.
Pihed, pricked up, dressed out.
Pine, pain; so spelt for the sake of the rhine.
Pistle, an epistle.
Plencere, full, fulness.
Purvay, to provide.

R.
Raught, reached.
Reed, warning, advice.
Rih, a rush.
Rolies, reeks, or smokes.
Rowned, whispered.

S.
Seech, to seek.
Shope, shaped, happened, befell.
Sicherly, surely, certainly.
Sike, such.
Sin, since.
Slownı, a while, a season, a time.
Suinke, sweat.
Steuthe, soon.
Sythes, times; oft sythes, oftentimes.

T.
Teen sorrow, grief.
Thrustle, a thrush.
Tyred, attired.

U. Unneth, scarcely. l'nwiste, unknown.

W. *
ll'are, beware.
Reen, to think, to imagine, to suppose.
Wceing, imagining,
Whilome, formerly.
Wight, a person.
Won, to dwell.
Wull, wool.

Y.
Yalde, yielded.
Yeve, give.
ygou, enough.

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The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including ..., Nide 6