Classic Poem

Sing on, sweet Muse, and whilst I feed mine eyes
Upon a jewel and unvalued prize,
As bright a star, a dame, as fair, as chaste,
As eye beheld, or shall, till Nature's last,
Charm her quick senses, and with raptures sweet
Make her affection with your cadence meet!
And if her graceful tongue admire one strain,
It is the best reward my pipe would gain.
In lieu whereof, in laurel-worthy rhymes
Her love shall live until the end of times,
And spite of age the last of days shall see
Her name embalm'd in sacred poesy.
Sadly alone upon the aged rocks,
Whom Thetis grac'd in washing oft their locks
Of branching samphire, sat the maid o'ertaken
With sighs and tears, unfortunate, forsaken,
And with a voice that floods from rocks would borrow,
She thus both wept and sung her notes of sorrow:
If Heaven be dear and will not hear my cries,
But adds new days to add new miseries;
Hear then, ye troubled waves and flitting gales,
That cool the bosoms of the fruitful vales!
Lend, one, a flood of tears, the other, wind,
To weep and sigh that Heaven is so unkind!
But if ye will not spare of all your store
One tear or sigh unto a wretch so poor;
Yet as ye travel on this spacious round,
Through forests, mountains, or the lawny ground,
If't hap you see a maid weep forth her woe,
As I have done, O bid her as ye go
Not lavish tears! for when her own are gone,
The world is flinty and will lend her none.
If this be eke deni'd, O hearken then,
Each hollow vaulted rock and crooked den!
And if within your sides one Echo be,
Let her begin to rue my destiny!
And in your clefts her plainings do not smother,
But let that Echo teach it to another!
Till round the world in sounding coombe and plain,
The last of them tell it the first again:
Of my sad fate so shall they never lin,
But where one ends, another still begin.
Wretch that I am, my words I vainly waste;
Echo of all woes only speaks the last;
And that's enough: for should she utter all,
As at Medusa's head, each heart would fall
Into a flinty substance, and repine
At no one grief except as great as mine.
No careful nurse would wet her watchful eye,
When any pang should gripe her infantry,
Nor though to Nature it obedience gave,
And kneel'd to do her homage in the grave,
Would she lament her suckling from her torn;
'Scaping by death those torments I have borne.
This sigh'd, she wept, low leaning on her hand,
Her briny tears down raining on the sand,
Which seen by them that sport it in the seas
On dolphins' backs, the fair Nereides,
They came on shore, and slily as they fell
Convey'd each tear into an oyster-shell,
And by some power that did affect the girls,
Transform'd those liquid drops to orient pearls,
And strew'd them on the shore: for whose rich prize
In winged pines the Roman colonies
Flung through the deep abyss to our white rocks
For gems to deck their ladies' golden locks:
Who valu'd them as highly in their kinds
As those the sunburnt Æthiopian finds.
Long on the shore distress'd Marina lay:
For he that opes the pleasant sweets of May,
Beyond the noonstead so far drove his team,
That harvest folks, with curds and clouted cream,
With cheese and butter, cakes, and cates enow,
That are the yeoman's from the yoke or cow,
On sheaves of corn were at their noonshun's close,
Whilst [by] them merrily the bagpipe goes:
Ere from her hand she lifted up her head,
Where all the Graces then inhabited.
When casting round her over-drowned eyes,
(So have I seen a gem of mickle price
Roll in a scallop-shell with water fill'd)
She, on a marble rock at hand beheld,
In characters deep cut with iron stroke,
A shepherd's moan, which, read by her, thus spoke:
Glide soft, ye silver floods,
And every spring:
Within the shady woods
Let no bird sing!
Nor from the grove a turtle-dove
Be seen to couple with her love;
But silence on each dale and mountain dwell,
Whilst Willy bids his friend and joy farewell.
But (of great Thetis' train)
Ye mermaids fair,
That on the shores do plain
Your sea-green hair,
As ye in trammels knit your locks,
Weep ye; and so enforce the rocks
In heavy murmurs through the broad shores tell
How Willy bade his friend and joy farewell.
Cease, cease, ye murd'ring winds,
To move a wave;
But if with troubled minds
You seek his grave;
Know 'tis as various as yourselves,
Now in the deep, then on the shelves,
His coffin toss'd by fish and surges fell,
Whilst Willy weeps and bids all joy farewell.
Had he Arion-like
Been judg'd to drown,
He on his lute could strike
So rare a sowne,
A thousand dolphins would have come
And jointly strive to bring him home.
But he on shipboard died, by sickness fell,
Since when his Willy bade all joy farewell.
Great Neptune, hear a swain!
His coffin take,
And with a golden chain
For pity make
It fast unto a rock near land!
Where ev'ry calmy morn I'll stand,
And ere one sheep out of my fold I tell,
Sad Willy's pipe shall bid his friend farewell.

Ah heavy shepherd, whosoe'er thou be,
Quoth fair Marina, I do pity thee:
For who by death is in a true friend cross'd,
Till he be earth, he half himself hath lost.
More happy deem I thee, lamented swain,
Whose body lies among the scaly train,
Since I shall never think that thou canst die,
Whilst Willy lives, or any poetry:
For well it seems in versing he hath skill,
And though he, aided from the sacred hill,
To thee with him no equal life can give,
Yet by his pen thou may'st for ever live.
With this a beam of sudden brightness flies
Upon her face, so dazzling her clear eyes,
That neither flower nor grass which by her grew
She could discern cloth'd in their perfect hue.
For as a wag, to sport with such as pass,
Taking the sunbeams in a looking-glass,
Conveys the ray into the eyes of one
Who, blinded, either stumbles at a stone,
Or as he dazzled walks the peopled streets,
Is ready justling every man he meets:
So then Apollo did in glory cast
His bright beams on a rock with gold enchas'd,
And thence the swift reflection of their light
Blinded those eyes, the chiefest stars of night.
When straight a thick-swoll'n cloud (as if it sought
In beauty's mind to have a thankful thought)
Inveil'd the lustre of great Titan's car,
And she beheld from whence she sat, not far,
Cut on a high-brow'd rock, inlaid with gold,
This epitaph, and read it, thus enroll'd:

In depth of waves long hath Alexis slept,
So choicest jewels are the closest kept;
Whose death the land had seen, but it appears
To countervail his loss men wanted tears.
So here he lies, whose dirge each mermaid sings,
For whom the clouds weep rain, the Earth her springs.