As when a maid taught from her mother wing,
To tune her voice unto a silver string,
When she should run, she rests; rests when should run,
And ends her lesson having now begun :
Now misseth she her stop, then in her song,
And doing of her best she still is wrong,
Begins again, and yet again strikes false,
Then in a chafe forsakes her virginals,
And yet within an hour she tries anew,
That with her daily pains, Art's chiefest due,
She gains that charming skill: and can no less
Tame the fierce walkers of the wilderness,
Than that Eagrian harpist, for whose lay,
Tigers with hunger pined and left their prey.
So Riot, when he gan to climb the hill,
Here maketh haste and there long standeth still,
Now getteth up a step, then falls again,
Yet not despairing all his nerves doth strain
To clamber up anew, then slide his feet,
And down he comes: but gives not over yet,
For, with the maid, he hopes a time will be
When merit shall be linked with industry.
BOOK I. SONG 5.
The hunted squirrel.
Then as a nimble squirrel from the wood,
Ranging the hedges for his filbert-food,
Sits pertly on a bough his brown nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking,
Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys,
To share with him, come with so great a noise
That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
And for his life leap to a neighbour oak,
Thence to a beech, thence to a row of ashes;
Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes
The boys run dabbling thorough thick and thin,
One tears his hose, another breaks his shin,
This, torn and tatter'd, hath with much ado
Got by the briars; and that hath lost his shoe:
This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste;
Another cries behind for being last:
With sticks and stones, and many a sounding hollow,
The little fool with no small sport they follow,
Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray,
Gets to the wood, and hides him in his dray.
And as a lovely maiden, pure and chaste,
With naked ivory neck and gown unlaced,
Within her chamber, when the day is fled,
Makes poor her garments to enrich her bed:
First, puts she off her lily-silken gown,
That shrinks for sorrow as she lays it down;
And with her arms graceth a waistcoat fine,
Embracing her as it would ne'er untwine.
Her flaxen hair, ensnaring the beholders,
She next permits to wave about her shoulders,
And though she cast it back, the silken slips
Still forward steal, and hang upon her lips:
Whereat she sweetly angry, with her laces
Binds up the wanton locks in curious traces,
Whilst, twisting with her joints, each hair long lingers
As loth to be enchained but with her fingers.
Then on her head a dressing like a crown;
Her breasts all bare, her kirtle slipping down,
And all things off which rightly ever be
Called the foul-fair marks of our misery,
Except her last, which enviously doth seize hcr
Lest any eye partake with it in pleasure,
Prepares for sweetest rest, while silvans greet her, And longingly the down-bed swells to meet her: So by degrees his shape all brutish wild
Fell from him as loose skin from some young child
In lieu whereof a man-like shape appears,
And gallant youth scarce skilled in twenty years,
So fair, so fresh, so young, so admirable
In every part, that since I am not able
In words to shew his picture, gentle swains,
Recall the praises in my former strains;
And know if they have graced any limb,
I only lent it those, but stole 't from him.
BOOK I. SONG 5.
The poet's ambition.
A truer love the Muses never sung,
Nor happier names e'er graced a golden tongue :
O they are better fitting his sweet stripe,
Who' on the banks of Ancor tuned his pipe :
Or rather for that learned swain 2, whose lays
Divinest Homer crowned with deathless bays;
Or any one sent from the sacred well
Inheriting the soul of Astrophell3:
These, these in golden lines might write this story,
And make these loves their own eternal glory :
Whilst I, a swain, as weak in years as skill,
Should in the valley hear them on the hill.
Yet when my sheep have at the cistern been
And I have brought them back to shear the green,
To miss an idle hour, and not for meed,
With choicest relish shall mine oaten reed
Record their worths: and though in accents rare
I miss the glory of a charming air,
My Muse may one day make the courtly swains
Enamoured on the music of the plains,
And as upon a hill she bravely sings
Teach humble dales to weep in crystal springs.
The praise of Spenser.
All their pipes were still,
And Colin Clout began to tune his quill
With such deep art that every one was given
To think Apollo, newly slid from Heaven,
Had ta'en a human shape to win his love,
Or with the western swains for glory strove.
He sung th' heroic knights of Faiery-land
In lines so elegant, of such command,
That had the Thracian played but half so well,
He had not left Eurydice in Hell.
But ere he ended his melodious song
An host of angels flew the clouds among,
And rapt this swan from his attentive mates,
To make him one of their associates
In Heaven's fair quire: where now he sings the praise
Of Him that is the first and last of days
Divinèst Spenser, heaven-bred, happy Muse!
Would any power into my brain infuse
Thy worth, or all that poets had before,
I could not praise till thou deserv'st no more.
A lament for his friend.
Glide soft, ye silver floods,
And every spring.
Within the shady woods
Let no bird sing!
Nor from the grove a turtle dove
Be seen to couple with her love.
But silence on each dale and mountain dwell,
Whilst Willy bids his friend and joy farewell.
But of great Thetis' train
Ye mermaids fair
That on the shores do plain
Your sea-green hair,
As ye in trammels knit your locks
Weep ye; and so enforce the rocks
In heavy murmurs through the broad shores tell,
How Willy bade his friend and joy farewell.
Cease, cease, ye murmuring winds,
To move a wave;
But if with troubled minds
You seek his grave,
Know 'tis as various as yourselves
Now in the deep, then on the shelves, His coffin tossed by fish and surges fell, Whilst Willy weeps, and bids all joy farewell.
Had he, Arion like
Been judged to drown,
He on his lute could strike
So rare a sown,
A thousand dolphins would have come And jointly strive to bring him home. But he on shipboard died, by sickness fell, Since when his Willy paid all joy farewell.
'Great Neptune, hear a swain !
His coffin take,
And with a golden chain
For pity make
It fast unto a rock near land!
Where ev'ry calmy morn I'll stand,
And ere one sheep out of my fold I tell,
Sad Willy's pipe shall bid his friend farewell
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