The basket and the bin of bread, Woe-worth the time! woe-worth the day, For we have lost, with thee, the meal, Chorus. All's gone, and death hath taken Away from us* Our maundy; thus Thy widows stand forsaken. Ah, Dorcas, Dorcas! now adieu We take our leaves now of the loom, From whence the housewives' cloth did come: * Or mand, figuratively put for bounty, from the maund, or basket, which contained it. See the dictionary definitions of Maundy-Thursday, a day on which our poten tates of yore washed the poor's feet, and distributed gifts among them from the royal almsbasket. For and may perhaps be intended for 'forehand, i. e. beforeband; heretofore. Shakspeare has ""forehand sin." See Much ado about Nothing; Act 4. Sc. 1. Chorus. The web affords now nothing; The worsted thread Is cut, that made us clothing. Farewell the flax, and reaming‡ wool, That ne'er went out by day, or night: Chorus. No; or thy zeal so speedy, That found a way, By peep of day, To feed, and clothe the needy. But ah, alas! the almond bough, The spice, and spikenard hence is gone, Gborus. The carol of our gladness Has taken wing; And our late spring Of mirth is turn'd to sadness. Stretching into cloth by spinning and weaving. To ream, in the West-country Exmore dialect, is to stretch. See Grose's Provincial Glossary. ト How wise wast thou in all thy ways! Of those, that prank it with their plumes, Chorus. Thy vestures were not flowing; Nor did the street Accuse thy feet Of mincing in their going. * Sleep with thy beauties here, while we These were thy acts; and thou shalt have Chorus. And, after us distressed, Should fame be dumb; Thy very tomb Would cry out, thou art blessed! IV. HIS SAVIOUR'S WORDS, GOING TO THE CROSS. HAVE, have ye no regard, all ye Who pass this way, to pity me, Who am a man of misery ? A man both bruis'd, and broke; and one Ah, Sion's daughters! do not fear For Christ, your loving saviour, hath Less for to taste, than for to shew When the present sheet of this volume was at the press, was favoured with a letter from the Rev. Mr. Samuel Herrick, of Brampton, near Market Harborough, to whom, as a descendant of the family, I had applied for any anecdotes he might be in possession of respecting our poet; but he could furnish nothing beyond what his relatives had before communicated to Mr. Nichols, for his History of Leicestershire. His letter was however accompanied with a copy of a very elegant little collection of Poems, entitled First Flights, written by his elder brother John, a lieutenant in the 15th dragoons, and printed 4to. 1797; the author died in his 35th year during their publication. This proves, that the poetic spark has been kept alive in the Herrick fafamily even to the present times. See note to poem 34. FINIS |