You naked trees, whose shadie leaues are loft,

Wherein the birds were wont to build their bowre, And now are cloath'd with moffe and hoarie frost, In ftead of bloffoms, wherewith your buds did flowre,

I fee your teares, that from your boughs doe raine, Whose drops in drerie y ficles remaine.

Alfo my luftfull leafe is dry and feare,

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My timely buds with wailing all are wasted: The bloffom which my branch of youth did beare, With breathed fighs is blowne away, and blasted. And from mine eyes the drizling teares descend, 41 As on your boughs the yficles depend.

Thou feeble flocke, whofe fleece is rough and rent, Whofe knees are weake, through fast, and euill

fare,

Maist witneffe well by thy ill gouernment,

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Thy maisters mind is ouercome with care. Thou weake, I wanne; thou leane, I quite forlorne; With mourning pine I, you with pining mourne.

A thousand fithes I curfe that carefull houre, Wherein I longd the neighbour towne to fee: 50 And eke ten thousand fithes I bleffe the ftoure,

Wherein I saw so faire a fight as shee. Yet all for nought: fuch fight hath bred my bane: Ah God, that loue should breed both ioy and paine!

It is not Hobbinol, wherefore I plaine,

Albee my loue he feeke with daily fuit:
His clownish gifts and curtefies I disdaine,
His kids, his cracknels, and his early fruit.
Ah, foolish Hobbinol, thy gifts been vaine:
Colin them gives to Rofalinde againe.

55

60

I loue thilke laffe, (alas, why doe I loue?)
And am forlorne, (alas, why am I lorne?)
Shee deignes not my good will, but doth reprooue,

And of my rurall mufick holdeth fcorne.
Shepheards deuife fhe hateth as the fnake,
And laughes the fongs that Colin Clout does make.

Wherefore my pipe, albee rude Pan thou please, Yet for thou pleasest not where most I would, And thou vnluckie Mufe, that woontst to ease

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My mufing minde, yet canft not, when thou should, Both pipe and Muse, shall fore the while abie: 71 So broke his oaten pipe, and downe did lie.

By that the welked Phoebus gan auaile

His wearie waine, and now the frostie Night Her mantle blacke through heauen gan overhaile; Which feene, the penfiue boy halfe in despight Arofe, and homeward droue his funned sheepe, Whose hanging heads did seem his careful cafe to

weepe.

SONNE T.

BY THE SAME.

ONE day I wrote her name vpon the strand,
But came the waues and washed it away:
Againe, I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tyde, and made my paines his pray. Vaine man, said she, that doost in vaine assay, 5 A mortal thing fo to immortalize,

For I myselfe shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise. Not fo, quoth I, let bafer things deuise

To die in duft, but you fhall liue by fame: My verfe your virtues rare shall eternize,

And in the heauens write your glorious name. Where, when as death fhall all the world fubdew, Our loue fhall liue, and later life renew.

10

ECLOGUE.

BY MICHAEL DRAYTON, ESQ.*

WHAT time the weary weather-beaten sheep, To get them fodder, hie them to the fold, And the poor herds that lately did them keep Shudder'd with keennefs of the winter's cold:

The

groves of their late fummer pride forlorn, 5 In moffy mantles fadly feem'd to mourn.

That filent time, about the upper world,
Phoebus had forc'd his fiery-footed team,
And down again the steep Olympus whirl'd
To wash his chariot in the Western stream,
In night's black fhade, when Rowland, all alone,
Thus him complains, his fellow fhepherds gone,

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You flames, quoth he, wherewith thou heaven art dight,

That me (alive) the woful'ft creature view, You, whose aspects have wrought me this defpight,

And me with hate yet ceaselessly pursue,

For whom too long I tarried for relief,

Now afk but death, that only ends my grief.

Born 1563; dyed 1631.

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Yearly my vows, O heavens, have I not paid,
Of the best fruits, and firftlings of my flock? 20
And oftentimes have bitterly inveigh'd

'Gainst them that you prophanely dar'd to
mock?

O, who shall ever give what is your due,

If mortal man be uprighter than you?

If the deep fighs of an afflicted breast,

O'erwhelm'd with forrow, or th' erected eyes

Of a poor wretch with miseries opprest,

25

For whose complaints tears never could fuffice, Have not the power your deities to move, Who fhall e'er look for fuccour from above? 30

O night, how still obfequious have I been,

To thy flow filence whispering in thine ear, That thy pale fovereign often hath been seen

Stay to behold me fadly from her sphere, Whilst the flow minutes duly I have told, With watchful eyes attending on my fold!

How oft by thee the folitary swain,

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Breathing his paffion to the early spring, Hath left to hear the nightingale complain, Pleafing his thoughts alone to hear me fing! 40 The nymphs forfook their places of abode, To hear the founds that from my mufick flow'd.