A CONTEMPLATION UPON FLOWERS
Brave flowers, that I could gallant it like you,
And be as little vain!
You come abroad, and make a harmless show,
And to your beds of earth again.
You are not proud: you know your birth,
For your embroidered garments are from earth.
You do obey your months and times, but I
Would have it ever spring;
My fate would know no winter, never die,
Nor think of such a thing.
O that I could my bed of earth but view
And smile, and look as cheerfully as you!
O teach me to see death and not to fear,
But rather to take truce.
How often have I seen you at a bier,
And there look fresh and spruce.
You fragrant flowers, then teach me, that my breath,
Like yours, may sweeten and perfume my death.
SHALL I, WASTING IN DESPAIR
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die, because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care,
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day
Or the flow'ry meads in May,
If she be not so to me
What care I how fair she be?
Think, "What, with them, they would do
Two pretty rills do meet, and, meeting, make
Within one valley a large silver lake,
About whose banks the fertile mountains stood,
In ages passed 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 play.
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 boist'rous sedge,
Nor grew there rudely then along the edge
A bending willow, nor a pricky bush,
Nor broad-leafed 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 sate, unfrighted then,
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 marl,
That river trills whose waters wash the fort
In which brave Arthur kept his royal court.
Northeast, not far from this great pool, there lies
A tract of beechy mountains, that arise,
With leisurely ascending, to such height
As from their tops the warlike Isle of Wight
You in the ocean's bosom may espy,
Though near two hundred furlongs thence it lie.
The pleasant way, as up those hills you climb,
Is strewèd o'er with marjarom and thyme,
Which grows unset. The hedge-rows do not want
The cowslip, violet, primrose, nor a plant
That freshly scents: as birch both green and tall;
Low sallows, on whose bloomings bees do fall;
Fair woodbinds, which about the hedges twine;
Smooth privet; and the sharp-sweet eglantine;
With many moe, whose leaves and blossoms fair
The earth adorn and oft perfume the air.
When you unto the highest do attain,
An intermixture both of wood and plain
You shall behold, which, though aloft it lie,
Hath downs for sheep, and fields for husbandry;
So much, at least, as little needeth more,
If not enough to merchandize their store.
In every row hath Nature planted there
Some banquet for the hungry passenger:
For here the hazel-nut and filberd grows,
There bulloes, and a little further sloes;
On this hand standeth a fair wielding tree;
On that, large thickets of black cherries be;
The shrubby fields are raspice orchards there;
The new-felled woods like strawberry gardens are;
And, had the King of Rivers blest those hills
With some small number of such pretty rills
As flow elsewhere, Arcadia had not seen
A sweeter plot of earth than this had been.
For what oftence this place was scanted so
Of springing waters, no record doth show,
Nor have they old tradition left that tells.
But, till this day, at fifty-fathom wells
The shepherds drink; and strange it was to hear
They no such art esteemed, nor took much heed
Of anything the world without them did.
Ev'n there, and in the least frequented place
Of all these mountains, is a little space
Of pleasant ground hemmed in with dropping trees,
And those so thick that Phoebus scarcely sees
The earth they grow on once in all the year,
Nor what is done among the shadows there.
Along those lovely paths, where never came
Report of Pan or of Apollo's name
Nor rumour of the Muses till of late,
Some nymphs were wand'ring, and by chance or fate
Upon a laund arrivèd where they met
The little flock of pastor Philaret.
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