a spectacle to all the world beside. But see the mishap of men: The best examples have never such force to move to any goodnes, as the bad, vaine, light and fond,1 have to all ilnes.2
ADDRESS TO HIS LUTE
My lute awake, perform the last
Labour, that thou and I shall waste
And end that I have now begun:
And when this song is sung and past,
My lute! be still, for I have done.
As to be heard where ear is none;
As lead to grave3 in marble stone;
My song may pierce her heart as soon.
Should we then sigh, or sing, or moan?
No, no, my lute! for I have done.
The rocks do not so cruelly
Repulse the waves continually,
As she my suit and affection:
So that I am past remedy;
Whereby my lute and I have done.
Proud of the spoil that thou hast got
Of simple hearts through Love's shot,
By whom, unkind, thou hast them won:
Think not he hath his bow forgot,
Although my lute and I have done.
Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain,
That makest but game on earnest pain;
Think not alone under the sun
Unquit to cause thy lovers plain;5
Although my lute and I have done.
May chance thee lie withered and old
In winter nights, that are so cold,
Plaining in vain unto the moon;
Thy wishes then dare not be told:
Care then who list, for I have done.
And then may chance thee to repent
The time that thou hast lost and spent,
To cause thy lovers sigh and swoon:
Then shalt thou know beauty but lent,
And wish and want as I have done.
Now cease, my lute ! this is the last
Labour, that thou and I shall waste;
And ended is that we begun :
Now is this song both sung and past;
My lute! be still, for I have done.
My love to scorn, my service to retain,
Therein, methought, you used cruelty;
Since with good will I lost my liberty,
To follow her which causeth all my pain.
Might never woe yet cause me to refrain;
But only this, which is extremity,
To give me nought, alas, nor to agree
That, as I was, your man I might remain:
But since that thus ye list to order me,
That would have been your servant true and fast :
Displease you not, my doting time is past;
And with my loss to leave I must agree:
For as there is a certain time to rage,
So is there time such madness to assuage.
EARL OF SURREY
(OUTLINE HISTORY, § 19)
THE SOOte season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale:
The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
The turtle to her make1 hath told her tale;
Summer is come, for every spray now springs,
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale;
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
The fishes flete with new repaired scale;
The adder all her slough away she slings;
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
The busy bee her honey now she mings;
Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
And thus I see among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs !
THE DEATH OF LAOCOON
(From the Eneid, Book II.)
WHILES Laocoon, that chosen was by lot
Neptunus' priest, did sacrifice a bull
Before the holy altar; suddenly
From Tenedon, behold! in circles great
By the calm seas come fleeting adders twain,
Which plied towards the shore (I loathe to tell)
With reared breast lift up above the seas:
Whose bloody crests aloft the waves were seen;
The hinder part swam hidden in the flood.
Their grisly backs were linked manifold.
With sound of broken waves they gat the strand,
With glowing eyen, tainted with blood and fire;
Whose waltring1 tongues did lick their hissing mouths.
We fled away; our face the blood forsook:
But they with gait direct to Lacon ran.
And first of all each serpent doth enwrap
The bodies small of his two tender sons;
Whose wretched limbs they bit, and fed thereon.
Then raught2 they him, who had his weapon caught
To rescue them; twice winding him about,
With folded knots and circled tails, his waist:
Their scaled backs did compass twice his neck,
With reared heads aloft and stretched throats.
He with his hands strave to unloose the knots,
* Reached.
(Whose sacred fillets all-besprinkled were
With filth of gory blood, and venom rank)
And to the stars such dreadful shouts he sent,
Like to the sound the roaring bull forth lows,
Which from the halter wounded doth astart,
The swerving axe when he shakes from his neck
The serpents twine, with hasted trail they glide
To Pallas' temple, and her towers of height:
Under the feet of which the Goddess stern,
Hidden behind her target's boss they crept.
New gripes of dread then pierce our trembling breasts.
LORD BUCKHURST
(OUTLINE HISTORY, § 24)
(From The Induction to A Myrroure for Magistrates)
THE wrathful winter, 'proaching on apace,
With blustering blasts had all ybared the treen,1
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierced the tender green;
The mantles rent wherein enwrapped been
The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapets2 torn and every bloom down blown;
The soil, that erst so seemly was to seen,
Was all despoiled of her beauty's hue,
And soote3 fresh flowers, wherewith the summer's green
Had clad the earth, now Boreas' blasts down blew;
And small fowls flocking in their song did rue
The winter's wrath, wherewith each thing defast
In woeful wise bewailed the summer past.
Hawthorn had lost his motley livery;
The naked twigs were shivering all for cold,
And dropping down the tears abundantly;
Each thing methought with weeping eye me told
The cruel season, bidding me withhold
Myself within; for I was gotten out
Into the fields whereas I walked about.
And sorrowing I to see the summer flowers
The lively green, the lusty leas forlorn,
The sturdy trees so shattered with the showers,
The fields no fade that flourished so beforne.
It taught me well all earthly things be born
To die the death, for nought long time may last;
The summer's beauty yields to winter's blast.
(OUTLINE HISTORY, §§ 25, 26)
In this first Æglogue Colin Cloute, a shepheardes boy, complaineth him of his unfortunate love, being but newly (as semeth) enamoured of a countrie lasse called Rosalinde: with which strong affection being very sore traveled, he compareth his carefull case to the sadde season of the yeare, to the frostie ground, to the frosen trees, and to his owne winterbeaten flocke. And lastlye, fynding himselfe robbed of all former pleasaunce and delights, hee breaketh his Pipe in peeces, and casteth him selfe to the ground.]
A SHEPEHEARDS boye, (no better doe him call,)
When Winters wastful spight was almost spent,
All in a sunneshine day, as did befall,
Led forth his flock, that had bene long ypent:
So faint they woxe, and feeble in the folde,
That now unnethes1 their feete could them uphold.
All as the Sheepe, such was the shepeheards looke,
For pale and wanne he was, (alas the while !)
May seeme he lovd, or els some care he tooke;
1 Hardly.
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