Which so amaze the skies, The raging tempests are calm Such most delightsome balm In all our Brittany There's not a fairer, Nor can you fit any, Should you compare her. Angels her eyelids keep, All hearts surprising; Which look while she doth sleep Like the sun's rising: She alone of her kind Knoweth true measure, And her unmatchéd mind Is heaven's treasure. Fair Dove and Darwent clear, To Trent your mistress here My love was higher born Towards the full fountains, Yet she doth moorland scorn And the Peak mountains; Nor would she none should dream Where she abideth, Humble as is the stream Which by her slideth. Yet my poor rustic Muse, Nothing can move her, Though her true lover: Have I waked for her, Yet this my piteous plight The sighs that I have spent CHORUS. - On thy bank Let thy swans sing her, And with their music Along let them bring her. Michael Drayton. THE TRENT. NCE more, O Trent! along thy pebbly marge A pensive invalid, reduced, and pale, From the close sick-room newly let at large, Which fills with joy the throstle's little throat! It was on this that many a sleepless night, As lone he watched the taper's sickly gleam, Troston. TROSTON HALL. FAR Secluded here, naught of the world I see; I wish an erring world these scenes with me to share. Capel Lofft. SHE Tunbridge. PHEBE, THE NYMPH OF THE WELL. HE smiled as she gave him a draught from the springlet, Tunbridge, thy waters are bitter, alas! But love finds an ambush in dimple and ringlet; A preux chevalier, and but lately a cripple, Some swore he was old, that his laurels were faded, And here is the home of her fondest election, The walls may be worn, but the ivy is green; And here she has tenderly twined her affection See, yonder he sits, where the church-bells invite us; "T is the joy of his age, and may fate so requite us When time shall have broken, or sickness, or care. Erelong, ay, too soon, a sad concourse will darken The doors of that church and that peaceful abode; His place then no longer will know him, but hearken, The widow and orphan appeal to their God. Much peace will be hers. "If our lot must be lowly, Resemble the father who's with us no more"; · And only on days that are high or are holy, She'll show him the cross that her warrior wore. So taught, he will rather take after his father, And still she 'll be charming, though ringlet and dimple And often she'll quote, with complacency simple, The compliments paid to the Nymph of the Well. And then will her darling, like all good and true ones, Console and sustain her, the weak and the strong; And some day or other two black eyes or blue ones Will smile on his path as he journeys along. Wherever they win him, whoever his Phoebe, Of course of all beauty she must be the belle, He will not fall out with a draught from the well. |