(Whom we in sorrow miss)

A swain whom Phoebe thought her love,
And Titan deemed his.

But he is gone; then inwards turn your light,
Behold him there; here never shall you more
O'erhang this sad plain with eternal night!
Or change the gaudy green she whilome wore
To fenny black. Hyperion great
To ashy paleness turn her!

Green well befits a lover's heat,

But black beseems a mourner.

Yet neither this thou can'st,
Nor see his second birth,

His brightness blinds thine eye more now,
Than thine did his on earth.

Let not a shepherd on our hapless plains
Tune notes of glee, as used were of yore:
For Philarete is dead, let mirthful strains
With Philarete cease for evermore!

And if a fellow swain do live
A niggard of his tears;
The shepherdesses all will give,
To store him, part of theirs.
Or I would lend him some,

But that the store I have
Will all be spent before I pay
The debt I owe his grave.

O what is left can make me leave to moan!
Or what remains but doth increase it more?

Look on his sheep; alas! their master's gone.
Look on the place where we two heretofore

With locked arms have vow'd our love,
(Our love, which time shall see
In shepherds' songs for ever move,
And grace their harmony)
It solitary seems.

Behold our flow'ry beds;
Their beauties fade, and violets

For sorrow hang their heads*.

'Tis not a cypress bough, a count'nance sad,
A mourning garment, wailing elegy,

A standing hearse in sable vesture clad,
A tomb built to his name's eternity.

Although the shepherds all should strive
By yearly obsequies,

And vow to keep thy fame alive

In spite of destinies,

That can suppress my grief;
All these, and more, may be,
Yet all in vain to recompense
My greatest loss of thee.

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,
With cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, &c.

L. 145.

Milton is fanciful, yet affecting; Browne puerile and disgusting.

Cypress may fade, the countenance be chang'd,
A garment rot, an elegy forgotten,

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
Shall fan and sweep away.

Look as a sweet rose fairly budding forth
Bewrays her beauties to the enamour'd morn,
Until some keen blast from the envious North
Kills the sweet bud that was but newly born,
Or else her rarest smells delighting
Make her herself betray,

Some white and curious hand inviting
To pluck her thence away.

So stands my mournful case,

For had he been less good,
Yet (uncorrupt) he had kept the stock
Whereon he fairly stood.

Yet though so long he liv'd not as he might,
He had the time appointed to him given.
Who liveth but the space of one poor night,
His birth, his youth, his age is in that even.
Whoever doth the period see

Of days by heav'n forth plotted,
Dies full of age, as well as he

That had more years allotted.

In sad tones then my verse

Shall with incessant tears
Bemoan my hapless loss of him,
And not his want of years.

In deepest passions of my grief-swol'n breast
(Sweet soul!) this only comfort seizeth me,
That so few years should make thee so much blest,
And gave such wings to reach eternity.

Is this to die? no, as a ship

Well built, with easy wind
A lazy hulk doth far outstrip,
And soonest harbour find:
So Philarete fled,

Quick was his passage given,

When others must have longer time
To make them fit for heaven.

Then not for thee these briny tears are spent,
But as the nightingale against the breer,

"Tis for myself I moan, and do lament,

Not that thou left'st the world, but left'st me here:
Here, where without thee all delights

Fail of their pleasing power:
All glorious days seem ugly nights,

Methinks no April shower

Embroider should the earth,

But briny tears distil,

Since Flora's beauties shall no more
Be honour'd by thy quill.

And ye his sheep (in token of his lack)
Whilome the fairest flock on all the plain,

Yean never lamb, but be it cloth'd in black.
Ye shady sycamores! when any swain

To carve his name upon your rind

Doth come, where his doth stand
Shed drops, if he be so unkind

To raze it with his hand.

And thou, my loved Muse,

No more should'st numbers move,
But that his name should ever live,
And after death my love.

This said, he sigh'd, and with o'er-drowned eyes
Gaz'd on the heavens for what he miss'd on earth;
Then from the earth, full gladly 'gau arise

As far from future hope, as present mirth,
Unto his cot with heavy pace

As ever sorrow trode,

He went, with mind no more to trace
Where mirthful swains abode ;

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.