Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton,Selected Poetry by George Wither, and Pastoral Poetry by William B | Page 9

the Earth's gross womb beneath,?Seem unto us with black steams?To pollute the Sun's bright beams,?And yet vanish into air,?Leaving it unblemished fair??So, my Willy, shall it be?With Detraction's breath on thee:?It shall never rise so high?As to stain thy poesy.?As that sun doth oft exhale?Vapours from each rotten vale,?Poesy so sometime drains?Gross conceits from muddy brains;?Mists of envy, fogs of spite,?Twixt men's judgments and her light;?But so much her power may do,?That she can dissolve them too.?If thy verse do bravely tower,?As she makes wing she gets power;?Yet the higher she doth soar,?She's affronted still the more,?Till she to the highest hath past;?Then she rests with Fame at last.?Let nought, therefore, thee affright;?But make forward in thy flight.?For if I could match thy rhyme,?To the very stars I'd climb;?There begin again, and fly?Till I reached eternity.?But, alas, my Muse is slow,?For thy place she flags too low;?Yea, the more's her hapless fate,?Her short wings were clipt of late;?And poor I, her fortune ruing,?Am put up myself a mewing.?But if I my cage can rid,?I'll fly where I never did;?And though for her sake I'm crost,?Though my best hopes I have lost,?And knew she would make my trouble?Ten times more than ten times double,?I should love and keep her too,?Spite of all the world could do.?For though, banished from my flocks?And confined within these rocks,?Here I waste away the light?And consume the sullen night,?She doth for my comfort stay,?And keeps many cares away.?Though I miss the flowery fields,?With those sweets the spring-tide yields;?Though I may not see those groves,?Where the shepherds chaunt their loves,?And the lasses more excel?Than the sweet-voiced Philomel;?Though of all those pleasures past,?Nothing now remains at last?But Remembrance--poor relief!?That more makes than mends my grief:?She's my mind's companion still,?Maugre envy's evil will;?Whence she should be driven too,?Were't in mortal's power to do.?She doth tell me where to borrow?Comfort in the midst of sorrow,?Makes the desolatest place?To her presence be a grace,?And the blackest discontents?To be pleasing ornaments.?In my former days of bliss?Her divine skill taught me this,?That from everything I saw?I could some invention draw,?And raise pleasure to her height?Through the meanest object's sight;?By the murmur of a spring,?Or the least bough's rustling;?By a daisy, whose leaves spread,?Shut when Titan goes to bed;?Or a shady bush or tree;?She could more infuse in me,?Than all Nature's beauties can?In some other wiser man.?By her help I also now?Make this churlish place allow?Some things that may sweeten gladness?In the very gall of sadness:?The dull loneness, the black shade?That these hanging vaults have made;?The strange music of the waves?Beating on these hollow caves;?This black den which rocks emboss?Overgrown with eldest moss;?The rude portals that give light?More to terror than delight;?This my chamber of neglect,?Walled about with disrespect;?From all these, and this dull air,?A fit object for despair,?She hath taught me, by her might,?To draw comfort and delight.?Therefore, thou best earthly bliss,?I will cherish thee for this.?Poesy, thou sweet'st content?That e'er Heaven to mortals lent!?Though they as a trifle leave thee?Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee,?Though thou be to them a scorn?That to nought but earth are born?Let my life no longer be?Than I am in love with thee.?Though our wise ones call thee madness,?Let me never taste of gladness,?If I love not thy maddest fits?More than all their greatest wits.?And though some, too seeming holy,?Do account thy raptures folly,?Thou dost teach me to contemn?What makes knaves and fools of them.
A Poet's Home
Two pretty rills do meet, and meeting make?Within one valley a large silver lake:?About whose banks the fertile mountains stood?In ages pass��d bravely crowned with wood,?Which lending cold-sweet shadows gave it grace?To be accounted Cynthia's bathing-place;?And from her father Neptune's brackish court,?Fair Thetis thither often would resort,?Attended by the fishes of the sea,?Which in those sweeter waters came to plea.?There would the daughter of the Sea God dive,?And thither came the Land Nymphs every eve?To wait upon her: bringing for her brows?Rich garlands of sweet flowers and beechy boughs.?For pleasant was that pool, and near it then?Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen,?It was nor overgrown with boisterous sedge,?Nor grew there rudely then along the edge?A bending willow, nor a prickly bush,?Nor broad-leaved flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush.?But here well-ordered was a grove with bowers,?There grassy plots set round about with flowers.?Here you might through the water see the land?Appear, strowed o'er with white or yellow sand;?Yon deeper was it, and the wind by whiffs?Would make it rise and wash the little cliffs?On which, oft pluming, sat unfrighted than?The gaggling wild-goose and the snow-white swan,?With all those flocks of fowls which to this day,?Upon those quiet waters breed and play.?For though those excellences wanting be?Which once it had, it is the same that we?By transposition name the Ford of Arle,?And out of which, along a chalky marle,?That river trills whose