Eclogue
A shepherd poor, Eubulus called he was;
Poor, now, alas! but erst had jolly been;
One pleasant morn, whenas the Sun did pass
The fiery horns of raging Bull between,
His little flock into a mead did bring,
As soon as daylight did begin to spring.
Fresh was the mead in April's livery dight,
Decked with green trees, bedewed with silver brooks:
But, ah! all other was the shepherd's plight,
All other were both sheep and shepherd's looks;
For both did show, by their dull heavy cheer,
They took no pleasure of the pleasant year.
He weeping went; ay me that he should weep!
They hung their heads, as they to weep would learn:
His heavy heart did send forth sighing deep;
They in their bleating voice did seem to yearn:
He lean and pale, their fleece was rough and rent;
They pined with pain, and he with dolours spent.
His pleasant pipe was broke, alas! the while,
And former merriment was banished quite;
His shepherd's crook, that him upheld erewhile,
He erst had thrown away with great despite:
Tho leaning 'gainst a shrub that him sustained,
To th' earth, sun, birds, trees, echo thus he plained.
" Thou all forth-bringing earth! though winter chill
With blust'ring winds blow off thy mantle green,
And with his snow and hoary frosts, do spill
Thy Flora-pleasing flowers, and kill them clean;
Yet when fresh Spring returns again
To drive away the winter's pain,
Thy frost and snow
Away do go,
Sweet Zephyr's breath cold Boreas doth displace,
And fruitless showers
Revive thy flowers,
And nought but joy is seen in every place.
" But, ah! how long, alas! how long doth last
My endless winter, without hope of spring!
How have my sighs, my blust'ring sighs, defac'd
The flowers and buds which erst my youth did bring!
Alas! the tops that did aspire
Lie trodden now in filthy mire;
Alas! my head
Is all bespread
With too untimely snow: and eke my heart
All sense hath lost,
Through hardened frost
Of cold despair, that long hath bred my smart.
" What though soon-rising torrents overflow
With nought-regarding streams thy pleasant green,
And with their furious force do lay full low
Thy drowned flowers, however sweet they been?
Soon fall those floods, as soon they rose,
For fury soon his force doth lose,
And then full eath
Apollo's breath,
The cold, yet drying North-wind, so doth warm,
That by and by
Thy meads be dry,
And grow more fruitful by their former harm.
" O would the tears, that torrent-like do flow
Adown my hollow cheeks with restless force,
Would once, O that they could once, calmer grow!
Would like to thine, once cease their ceaseless course.
Thine last not long; mine still endure:
Thine cold; and so thy wealth procure:
Hot mine are still,
And so do kill
Both flower and root, with most unkindly dew:
What sun or wind
A way can find,
The root once dead, the flowers to renew?
" Thou, though the scorching heat of summer sun,
While ill-breathed dog the raging lion chaseth,
Thy peckled flowers do make of colour dun,
And pride of all thy greeny hair defaceth;
And in thy moisture-wanting side,
Deep wounds do make, and gashes wide:
Yet as thy weat
By Phaebus' heat
To turn to wholesome dryness is procured,
So Phaebus' heat
By South-winds' weat
Is soon assuaged, and all thy wounds recured.
" Such heat as Phaebus' hath me almost slain.
As Phaebus' heat? ah! no, far worse than his;
It is Astrea's burning-hot disdain
That parched hath the root of all my bliss:
That hath, alas! my youth defaced;
That in my face deep wounds hath placed.
Ah! that no heat
Can dry the weat,
The flowing weat, of my still weaping eyes!
Ah! that no weat
Can quench the heat,
The burning heat within my heart that lies!
" Thou dost, poor earth! bear many a bitter stound;
While greedy swains, forgetting former need,
With crooked ploughs thy tender back do wound,
With harrows' biting teeth do make thee bleed:
But earth, so may those greedy swains
With piteous eye behold thy pains!
Oh, earth! tell me,
When thou dost see
Thy fruitful back with golden ears beset,
Doth not that joy
Kill all annoy,
And make thee all thy former wounds forget?
" And I, if once my tired heart might gain
The harvest fair that to my faith is due;
If once I might Astrea's grace regain;
If once her heart would on my sorrows rue:
Alas! I could these plaints forego,
And quite forget my former woe.
But, oh! to speak
My heart doth break;
For all my service, faith, and patient mind,
A crop of grief
Without relief,
A crop of scorn, and of contempt I find.
" Soon as the shepherd's star abroad doth wend,
Night's harbinger, to shut in brightsome day,
And gloomy night, on whom black clouds attend,
Doth, tyrant-like, through sky usurp the sway,
Thou art, poor earth, of sun deprived,
Whose beams to thee all joy derived;
But when Aurore
Doth ope her door,
Her purple door, to let in Phaebus' wain,
The night gives place
Unto his race,
And then with joy thy sun returns again.
" Oh! would my sun would once return again!
Return, and drive away th'infernal night,
In which I die, since she did first refrain
Her heavenly beams, which were mine only light.
In her alone all my light shined;
And since she shined not, I am blind.
Alas! on all
Her beams do fall,
Save wretched me, whom she doth them deny;
And blessed day
She gives alway.
To all but me, who still in darkness lie.
" In mournful darkness I alone do lie,
And wish, but scarcely hope, bright day to see;
For hoped so long, and wished so long have I,
As hopes and wishes both abandon me.
My night hath lasted fifteen years,
And yet no glimpse of day appears!
Oh! do not let
Him that hath set
His joy, his light, his life, in your sweet grace,
Be unrelieved,
And quite deprived
Of your dear sight, which may this night displace.
" Phaebus, although with fiery-hoofed steeds
Thou daily do the steepy welkin beat,
And from this painful task art never freed,
But daily bound to lend the world thy heat;
Though thou in fiery chariot ride,
And burning heat thereof abide;
Yet soon as night
Doth dim the light,
And hale her sable cloak through vaulted sky,
Thy journey's ceast,
And thou dost rest
In cooling waves of Thetis' sovereignty.
" Thrice happy Sun! whose pains are eased by night:
Oh, hapless I! whose woes last night and day!
My pains by day do make me wish for night,
My woes by night do make me cry for day:
By day I turmoil up and down,
By night in seas of tears I drown:
O painful plight!
O wretched night,
Which never finds a morn of joyful light!
O sad decay!
O wretched day,
That never feels the ease of silent night!
" Ye chirping birds! whose notes might joy my mind,
If to my mind one drop of joy could sink;
Who erst through Winter's rage were almost pined,
And kept through barren frost from meat or drink;
A blessed change ye now have seen,
That changed hath your woeful teen:
By day you sing,
And make to ring
The neighbour groves with echo of your song;
In silent night,
Full closely dight,
You soundly sleep the bushes green among.
" But I, who erst, ah! woeful word to say,
Enjoyed the pleasant spring of her sweet grace,
And then could sing and dance, and sport and play;
Since her fierce anger did my spring displace,
My nightly rest have turned to detriment,
To plaints have turned my wonted merriment:
The songs I sing
While day doth spring,
Are bootless plaints till I can plain no more;
The rest I taste,
While night doth last,
Is broken sighs, till they my heart make sore.
" Thou flowret of the field! that erst didst fade,
And nipt with northern cold didst hang the head;
Ye trees whose bared boughs had lost their shade,
Whose withered leaves by western blasts were shed;
Ye 'gin to bud and spring again:
Winter is gone, that did you strain.
But I, that late,
With upright gait,
Bare up my head, while happy favour lasted,
Now old am grown,
Now overthrown,
With woe, with grief, with wailing now am wasted.
" Your springing stalk with kindly juice doth sprout,
My fainting legs do waste and fall away;
Your stretched arms are clad with leaves about,
My grief-consumed arms do fast decay;
You 'gin again your tops lift up,
I down to earth-ward 'gin to stoop:
Each bough and twig
Doth wax so big,
That scarce the rind is able it to hide;
I do so faint,
And pine with plaint,
That slops, and hose, and galage, wax too wide.
" Echo, how well may she that makes me moan,
By thy example learn to rue my pain!
Thou hear'st my plaints whenas I wail alone,
And wailing accents answerest again:
When as my breast through grief I beat,
That woeful sound thou dost repeat;
Whenas I sob,
And heartly throb,
A doleful sobbing sound again thou sendest;
And when I weep,
And sigh full deep,
A weepy, sighing voice again thou lendest.
" But, ah! how oft have my sad plaints assayed
To pierce her ears, deaf only unto me!
How oft my woes, in mournful ink arrayed,
Have tried to make her eyes my griefs to see!
And you, my sighs and tears, how often
Have ye sought her hard heart to soften!
And yet her eye
Doth still deny,
For all my woes, one bitter tear to shed;
And yet her heart
Will not impart
One hearty sigh for grief herself hath bred.
" Nor I, alas! do wish that her fair eyes,
Her blessed-making eyes, should shed a tear;
Nor that one sigh from her dear breast should rise,
For all the pains, the woes, the wrongs I bear:
First, let this weight oppress me still,
Ere she through me taste any ill.
Ah! if I might
But gain her sight,
And show her ere I die my wretched case
O then should I
Contented die:
But ah! I die, and hope not so much grace.
With that his fainting legs to shrink begun,
And let him sink with ghastly look to ground;
And there he lay, as though his life were done,
Till that his dog, seeing that woeful stound,
With piteous howling, kissing, and with scraping,
Brought him again from that sweet-sour escaping.
Then 'gan his tears so swiftly for to flow,
As forced his eyelids for to give them way;
Then blust'ring sighs too boist'rously 'gan blow,
As his weak lips could not their fury stay;
And inward grief withal so hugely swelled,
As tears, sighs, grief, had soon all words expelled.
At last, when floods of tears began to cease,
And storms of weary sighs more calm to blow
As he went on with words his grief to ease,
And remnant of his broken plaint to show,
He 'spy'd the sky o'erspread with nightly clouds;
So home he went, his flock and him to shroud.
EUBULUS HIS EMBLEM.
UNI MIHI PERGAMA RESTANT .
Poor, now, alas! but erst had jolly been;
One pleasant morn, whenas the Sun did pass
The fiery horns of raging Bull between,
His little flock into a mead did bring,
As soon as daylight did begin to spring.
Fresh was the mead in April's livery dight,
Decked with green trees, bedewed with silver brooks:
But, ah! all other was the shepherd's plight,
All other were both sheep and shepherd's looks;
For both did show, by their dull heavy cheer,
They took no pleasure of the pleasant year.
He weeping went; ay me that he should weep!
They hung their heads, as they to weep would learn:
His heavy heart did send forth sighing deep;
They in their bleating voice did seem to yearn:
He lean and pale, their fleece was rough and rent;
They pined with pain, and he with dolours spent.
His pleasant pipe was broke, alas! the while,
And former merriment was banished quite;
His shepherd's crook, that him upheld erewhile,
He erst had thrown away with great despite:
Tho leaning 'gainst a shrub that him sustained,
To th' earth, sun, birds, trees, echo thus he plained.
" Thou all forth-bringing earth! though winter chill
With blust'ring winds blow off thy mantle green,
And with his snow and hoary frosts, do spill
Thy Flora-pleasing flowers, and kill them clean;
Yet when fresh Spring returns again
To drive away the winter's pain,
Thy frost and snow
Away do go,
Sweet Zephyr's breath cold Boreas doth displace,
And fruitless showers
Revive thy flowers,
And nought but joy is seen in every place.
" But, ah! how long, alas! how long doth last
My endless winter, without hope of spring!
How have my sighs, my blust'ring sighs, defac'd
The flowers and buds which erst my youth did bring!
Alas! the tops that did aspire
Lie trodden now in filthy mire;
Alas! my head
Is all bespread
With too untimely snow: and eke my heart
All sense hath lost,
Through hardened frost
Of cold despair, that long hath bred my smart.
" What though soon-rising torrents overflow
With nought-regarding streams thy pleasant green,
And with their furious force do lay full low
Thy drowned flowers, however sweet they been?
Soon fall those floods, as soon they rose,
For fury soon his force doth lose,
And then full eath
Apollo's breath,
The cold, yet drying North-wind, so doth warm,
That by and by
Thy meads be dry,
And grow more fruitful by their former harm.
" O would the tears, that torrent-like do flow
Adown my hollow cheeks with restless force,
Would once, O that they could once, calmer grow!
Would like to thine, once cease their ceaseless course.
Thine last not long; mine still endure:
Thine cold; and so thy wealth procure:
Hot mine are still,
And so do kill
Both flower and root, with most unkindly dew:
What sun or wind
A way can find,
The root once dead, the flowers to renew?
" Thou, though the scorching heat of summer sun,
While ill-breathed dog the raging lion chaseth,
Thy peckled flowers do make of colour dun,
And pride of all thy greeny hair defaceth;
And in thy moisture-wanting side,
Deep wounds do make, and gashes wide:
Yet as thy weat
By Phaebus' heat
To turn to wholesome dryness is procured,
So Phaebus' heat
By South-winds' weat
Is soon assuaged, and all thy wounds recured.
" Such heat as Phaebus' hath me almost slain.
As Phaebus' heat? ah! no, far worse than his;
It is Astrea's burning-hot disdain
That parched hath the root of all my bliss:
That hath, alas! my youth defaced;
That in my face deep wounds hath placed.
Ah! that no heat
Can dry the weat,
The flowing weat, of my still weaping eyes!
Ah! that no weat
Can quench the heat,
The burning heat within my heart that lies!
" Thou dost, poor earth! bear many a bitter stound;
While greedy swains, forgetting former need,
With crooked ploughs thy tender back do wound,
With harrows' biting teeth do make thee bleed:
But earth, so may those greedy swains
With piteous eye behold thy pains!
Oh, earth! tell me,
When thou dost see
Thy fruitful back with golden ears beset,
Doth not that joy
Kill all annoy,
And make thee all thy former wounds forget?
" And I, if once my tired heart might gain
The harvest fair that to my faith is due;
If once I might Astrea's grace regain;
If once her heart would on my sorrows rue:
Alas! I could these plaints forego,
And quite forget my former woe.
But, oh! to speak
My heart doth break;
For all my service, faith, and patient mind,
A crop of grief
Without relief,
A crop of scorn, and of contempt I find.
" Soon as the shepherd's star abroad doth wend,
Night's harbinger, to shut in brightsome day,
And gloomy night, on whom black clouds attend,
Doth, tyrant-like, through sky usurp the sway,
Thou art, poor earth, of sun deprived,
Whose beams to thee all joy derived;
But when Aurore
Doth ope her door,
Her purple door, to let in Phaebus' wain,
The night gives place
Unto his race,
And then with joy thy sun returns again.
" Oh! would my sun would once return again!
Return, and drive away th'infernal night,
In which I die, since she did first refrain
Her heavenly beams, which were mine only light.
In her alone all my light shined;
And since she shined not, I am blind.
Alas! on all
Her beams do fall,
Save wretched me, whom she doth them deny;
And blessed day
She gives alway.
To all but me, who still in darkness lie.
" In mournful darkness I alone do lie,
And wish, but scarcely hope, bright day to see;
For hoped so long, and wished so long have I,
As hopes and wishes both abandon me.
My night hath lasted fifteen years,
And yet no glimpse of day appears!
Oh! do not let
Him that hath set
His joy, his light, his life, in your sweet grace,
Be unrelieved,
And quite deprived
Of your dear sight, which may this night displace.
" Phaebus, although with fiery-hoofed steeds
Thou daily do the steepy welkin beat,
And from this painful task art never freed,
But daily bound to lend the world thy heat;
Though thou in fiery chariot ride,
And burning heat thereof abide;
Yet soon as night
Doth dim the light,
And hale her sable cloak through vaulted sky,
Thy journey's ceast,
And thou dost rest
In cooling waves of Thetis' sovereignty.
" Thrice happy Sun! whose pains are eased by night:
Oh, hapless I! whose woes last night and day!
My pains by day do make me wish for night,
My woes by night do make me cry for day:
By day I turmoil up and down,
By night in seas of tears I drown:
O painful plight!
O wretched night,
Which never finds a morn of joyful light!
O sad decay!
O wretched day,
That never feels the ease of silent night!
" Ye chirping birds! whose notes might joy my mind,
If to my mind one drop of joy could sink;
Who erst through Winter's rage were almost pined,
And kept through barren frost from meat or drink;
A blessed change ye now have seen,
That changed hath your woeful teen:
By day you sing,
And make to ring
The neighbour groves with echo of your song;
In silent night,
Full closely dight,
You soundly sleep the bushes green among.
" But I, who erst, ah! woeful word to say,
Enjoyed the pleasant spring of her sweet grace,
And then could sing and dance, and sport and play;
Since her fierce anger did my spring displace,
My nightly rest have turned to detriment,
To plaints have turned my wonted merriment:
The songs I sing
While day doth spring,
Are bootless plaints till I can plain no more;
The rest I taste,
While night doth last,
Is broken sighs, till they my heart make sore.
" Thou flowret of the field! that erst didst fade,
And nipt with northern cold didst hang the head;
Ye trees whose bared boughs had lost their shade,
Whose withered leaves by western blasts were shed;
Ye 'gin to bud and spring again:
Winter is gone, that did you strain.
But I, that late,
With upright gait,
Bare up my head, while happy favour lasted,
Now old am grown,
Now overthrown,
With woe, with grief, with wailing now am wasted.
" Your springing stalk with kindly juice doth sprout,
My fainting legs do waste and fall away;
Your stretched arms are clad with leaves about,
My grief-consumed arms do fast decay;
You 'gin again your tops lift up,
I down to earth-ward 'gin to stoop:
Each bough and twig
Doth wax so big,
That scarce the rind is able it to hide;
I do so faint,
And pine with plaint,
That slops, and hose, and galage, wax too wide.
" Echo, how well may she that makes me moan,
By thy example learn to rue my pain!
Thou hear'st my plaints whenas I wail alone,
And wailing accents answerest again:
When as my breast through grief I beat,
That woeful sound thou dost repeat;
Whenas I sob,
And heartly throb,
A doleful sobbing sound again thou sendest;
And when I weep,
And sigh full deep,
A weepy, sighing voice again thou lendest.
" But, ah! how oft have my sad plaints assayed
To pierce her ears, deaf only unto me!
How oft my woes, in mournful ink arrayed,
Have tried to make her eyes my griefs to see!
And you, my sighs and tears, how often
Have ye sought her hard heart to soften!
And yet her eye
Doth still deny,
For all my woes, one bitter tear to shed;
And yet her heart
Will not impart
One hearty sigh for grief herself hath bred.
" Nor I, alas! do wish that her fair eyes,
Her blessed-making eyes, should shed a tear;
Nor that one sigh from her dear breast should rise,
For all the pains, the woes, the wrongs I bear:
First, let this weight oppress me still,
Ere she through me taste any ill.
Ah! if I might
But gain her sight,
And show her ere I die my wretched case
O then should I
Contented die:
But ah! I die, and hope not so much grace.
With that his fainting legs to shrink begun,
And let him sink with ghastly look to ground;
And there he lay, as though his life were done,
Till that his dog, seeing that woeful stound,
With piteous howling, kissing, and with scraping,
Brought him again from that sweet-sour escaping.
Then 'gan his tears so swiftly for to flow,
As forced his eyelids for to give them way;
Then blust'ring sighs too boist'rously 'gan blow,
As his weak lips could not their fury stay;
And inward grief withal so hugely swelled,
As tears, sighs, grief, had soon all words expelled.
At last, when floods of tears began to cease,
And storms of weary sighs more calm to blow
As he went on with words his grief to ease,
And remnant of his broken plaint to show,
He 'spy'd the sky o'erspread with nightly clouds;
So home he went, his flock and him to shroud.
EUBULUS HIS EMBLEM.
UNI MIHI PERGAMA RESTANT .
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