Page images
PDF
EPUB

Tears to the soldiers, the proud Castilians shame,
Vertue exprest, and honor truly taught.

What hath he lost, that such great grace hath woon?
Yoong yeeres for endles yeeres, and hope unsure
Of fortunes gifts for wealth that still shall dure;
Oh! happie race with so great praises run.

England doth hold thy lims that bred the same,
Flaunders thy valure where it last was tried,
The Campe thy sorrow where thy bodie died;
Thy friends, thy want; the world, thy vertues fame.

Nations thy wit, our mindes lay up thy love;

40

45

Letters thy learning, thy losse, yeeres long to come; 50 In worthy harts sorrow hath made thy tombe;

Thy soule and spright enrich the heavens above.

Thy liberall hart imbalmd in gratefull teares,

Yoong sighes, sweet sighes, sage sighes, bewaile thy fall:
Envie her sting, and Spite hath left her gall;
Malice her selfe a mourning garment weares.

55

That day their Hanniball died, our Scipio fell;
Scipio, Cicero, and Petrarch of our time!
Whose vertues, wounded by my worthelesse rime,
Let Angels speake, and heaven thy praises tell.

[blocks in formation]

60

ANOTHER OF THE SAME.

SILENCE augmenteth grief, writing encreaseth rage, Stald are my thoughts, which lov'd, and lost, the wonder of

our age,

Yet quickned now with fire, though dead with frost ere now, Enrag'de I write, I know not what: dead, quick, I know not how.

5

Hard harted mindes relent, and Rigors teares abound,
And Envie strangely rues his end, in whom no fault she

found;

Knowledge her light hath lost, Valor hath slaine her knight; Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the worlds delight.

Place pensive wailes his fall, whose presence was her pride; Time crieth out, My ebbe is come; his life was my spring tide:

Fame mournes in that she lost the ground of her reports; Ech living wight laments his lacke, and all in sundry sorts.

10

He was (wo worth that word!) to ech well thinking minde
A spotlesse friend, a matchles man, whose vertue ever shinde,
Declaring in his thoughts, his life, and that he writ,
Highest conceits, longest foresights, and deepest works of wit.

He, onely like himselfe, was second unto none,

15

Whose deth (though life) we rue, and wrong, and al in vain

do mone;

Their losse, not him, waile they, that fill the world with cries; Death slue not him, but he made death his ladder to the

skies.

20

Now sinke of sorrow I, who live; the

[blocks in formation]

Who wishing death, whom deth denies, whose thred is al-to

long,

Who tied to wretched life, who lookes for no reliefe,
Must spend my ever dying daies in never ending griefe.

Harts ease and onely I, like parables run on,

25

Whose equall length keep equall bredth, and never meet in

one;

Yet for not wronging him, my thoughts, my sorrowes cell, Shall not run out, though leake they will, for liking him so well.

Farewell to you, my hopes, my wonted waking dreames; Farewell, sometimes enioyed, ioy; eclipsed are thy beames! 30 Farewell selfe pleasing thoughts, which quietnes brings foorth; And farewell friendships sacred league, uniting minds of woorth.

And farewell mery hart, the gift of guiltlesse mindes,
And all sports, which, for lives restore, varietie assignes;
Let all, that sweete is, voyd; in me no mirth may dwell, 35
Phillip, the cause of all this woe, my lives content, farewell!

Now rime, the sonne of rage, which art no kin to skill, And endles griefe, which deads my life, yet knowes not how to kill,

Go, seeke that haples tombe; which if ye hap to finde,

Salute the stones, that keep the lims that held so good a

minde.

40

PROTHALAMION:

OR,

A SPOUSALL VERSE,

MADE BY

EDM. SPENSER,

In honour of the double marriage of the two honorable and vertuous ladies, the Ladie Elizabeth, and the Ladie Katherine Somerset, daughters to the right honorable the Earle of Worcester, and espoused to the two worthie gentlemen, M. Henry Gilford and M. William Peter, Esquyers.

25*

« PreviousContinue »