(Whom we in sorrow miss) A swain whom Phoebe thought her love, But he is gone; then inwards turn your light, Green well befits a lover's heat, But black beseems a mourner. Yet neither this thou can'st, His brightness blinds thine eye more now, Let not a shepherd on our hapless plains And if a fellow swain do live But that the store I have O what is left can make me leave to moan! Look on his sheep; alas! their master's gone. With locked arms have vow'd our love, Behold our flow'ry beds; For sorrow hang their heads*. 'Tis not a cypress bough, a count'nance sad, A standing hearse in sable vesture clad, Although the shepherds all should strive And vow to keep thy fame alive In spite of destinies, That can suppress my grief; and violets For sorrow hang their heads.] Milton, instead of representing the vegetable creation as affected at the death of his friend, with superior judgment calls for the several flowers To strew the laureat hearse where Lycid lies. Among which he mentions The glowing violet, The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine, L. 145. Milton is fanciful, yet affecting; Browne puerile and disgusting. Cypress may fade, the countenance be chang'd, A hearse 'mongst irreligious rites be ranged, A tomb pluck'd down, or else through age be rotten: All things th' impartial hand of Fate Can raze out with a thought: These have a sev'ral fixed date, Which ended, turn to nought. Yet shall my truest cause Of sorrow firmly stay, When these effects the wings to Time Look as a sweet rose fairly budding forth Some white and curious hand inviting So stands my mournful case, For had he been less good, Yet though so long he liv'd not as he might, Of days by heav'n forth plotted, That had more years allotted. In sad tones then my verse Shall with incessant tears In deepest passions of my grief-swol'n breast Is this to die? no, as a ship Well built, with easy wind Quick was his passage given, When others must have longer time Then not for thee these briny tears are spent, "Tis for myself I moan, and do lament, Not that thou left'st the world, but left'st me here: Fail of their pleasing power: Methinks no April shower Embroider should the earth, But briny tears distil, Since Flora's beauties shall no more And ye his sheep (in token of his lack) Yean never lamb, but be it cloth'd in black. To carve his name upon your rind Doth come, where his doth stand To raze it with his hand. And thou, my loved Muse, No more should'st numbers move, This said, he sigh'd, and with o'er-drowned eyes As far from future hope, as present mirth, As ever sorrow trode, He went, with mind no more to trace And as he spent the day The night he past alone; Was never shepherd lov'd more dear, Nor made a truer moan. The Shepherd's Pipe, by W. Browne, Ecl. iv. |