English

My name is Parrot, a bird of Paradise,
By nature devised of a wonderous kind,
Daintily dieted with divers delicate spice
Till Euphrates, that flood, driveth me into Ind;
Where men of that country by fortune me find
And send me to great─ù lady─ùs of estate:
Then Parrot must have an almond or a date.

A cage curiously carven, with a silver pin,
Properly painted, to be my coverture;
A mirror of glass─ù, that I may toot therein:

Trip it, gipsies, trip it fine,
— Show tricks and lofty capers;
At threading-needles we repine,
— And leaping over rapiers:
Pindy-pandy rascal toys,
— We scorn cutting purses;
Though we live by making noise,
— For cheating none can curse us.

Over high ways, over low,
— And over stones and gravel,
Though we trip it on the toe,
— And thus for silver travel:
Though our dances waste our backs,
— At night fat capons mend them;
Eggs well brewed in buttered sack,
— Our wenches say befriend them.

Long had this nation been amused in vain
With posts from Portugal, and news from Spain,
With Ormond's conquests, and the fleet's success,
And favors from the Moors at Maccaness.
The learned mob bought compasses and scales,
And every barber knew the Bay of Cales,
Showed us the army here, and there the fleet,
Here the troops land, and there the foes retreat,
There at St. Maries how the Spaniard runs,
And listen close as if they heard the guns,
And some pretend they see them swive the nuns.

NOVEMBER .

The mellow year is hasting to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last,
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast —
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows:
The patient beauty of the scentless rose,
Oft with the Morn's hoar chrystal quaintly glass'd,
Hangs, a pale mourner for the summer past,
And makes a little summer where it grows:
In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day
The dusky waters shudder as they shine,

The first day she passed up and down through the Heavens, gentle and simple were left standing, and they in great wonder, saying one to the other:
" What new light is that? What new beauty at all? The like of herself hasn't risen up these long years from the common world. "

Ah, Death, it is you that have left the world cold and shady, with no sun over it. It's you have left Love without eyes or arms to him, you've left liveliness stripped, and beauty without a shape to her, and all courtesy in chains, and honesty thrown down into a hole. I am making lamentation alone, though it isn't myself only has a cause to be crying out; since you, Death, have crushed the first seed of goodness in the whole world, and with it gone what place will we find a second?

Let you go down, sorrowful rhymes, to the hard rock is covering my dear treasure, and then let you call out till herself that is in the Heavens will make answer, though her dead body is lying in a shady place.
Let you say to her that it is tired out I am with being alive, with steering in bad seas, but I am going after step by step, gathering up what she let fall behind her.
It is of her only I do be thinking, and she living and dead, and now I have made her with my songs so that the whole world may know her, and give her the love that is her due.

Is this the nest in which my Phaenix put on her feathers of gold and purple, my Phaenix that did hold me under her wing, and she drawing out sweet words and sighs from me? Oh, root of my sweet misery, where is that beautiful face, where light would be shining out, the face that did keep my heart like a flame burning? She was without a match upon the earth, I hear them say, and now she is happy in the Heavens.

The south wind is coming back, bringing the fine season, and the flowers, and the grass, her sweet family, along with her. The swallow and the nightingale are making a stir, and the spring is turning white and red in every place.
There is a cheerful look on the meadows, and peace in the sky, and the sun is well pleased, I'm thinking, looking downward, and the air and the waters and the earth herself are full of love, and every beast is turning back looking for its mate.

The eyes that I would be talking of so warmly, and the arms, and the hands, and the feet, and the face that are after calling me away from myself, and making me a lonesome man among all people.
The hair that was of shining gold, and brightness of the smile that was the like of an angel's surely, and was making a paradise of the earth, are turned to a little dust that knows nothing at all.