"You naked trees, whose shady leaves are lost, Wherein the birds were wont to build their bower, And now are cloth'd with moss and hoary frost, Instead of blossoms, wherewith your buds did flower; I see your tears that from your boughs do rain, Whose drops in dreary icicles remain.
"All so my lustful leaf is dry and sere, My timely buds with wailing all are wasted; The blossom which my branch of youth did bear, With breathed sighs is blown away and blasted; And from mine eyes the drizzling tears descend, As on your boughs the icicles depend.
"Thou feeble flock! whose fleece is rough and rent, Whose knees are weak through fast and evil fare, Mayst witness well, by thy ill government, Thy master's mind is overcome with care: Thou weak, I wan; thou lean, I quite forlorn: With mourning pine I; you with pining mourn.
"A thousand siths I curse that careful hour Wherein I long'd the neighbour town to see, And eke ten thousand siths I bless the stoure Wherein I saw so fair a sight as she: Yet all for naught: such sight hath bred my bane. Ah, God! that love should breed both joy and pain!
"It is not Hobbinol[2] wherefore I plain, Albe my love he seek with daily suit; His clownish gifts and court'sies I disdain, His kids, his cracknels, and his early fruit. Ah, foolish Hobbinol! thy gifts be vain; Colin them gives to Rosalind again.
"I love thilk lass, (alas! why do I love?) And am forlorn, (alas! why am I lorn?) She deigns not my good will, but doth reprove, And of my rural music holdeth scorn. Shepheard's device she hateth as the snake, And laughs the songs that Colin Clout doth make.
"Wherefore, my pipe, albe rude Pan thou please, Yet for thou pleasest not where most I would; And thou, unlucky Muse, that wont'st to ease My musing mind, yet canst not when thou should; Both Pipe and Muse shall sore the while abye." So broke his oaten pipe, and down did lie.
By that, the welked Phoebus gan availe His weary wain; and now the frosty Night Her mantle black through heaven gan overhale: Which seen, the pensive boy, half in despite, Arose, and homeward drove his sunned sheep, Whose hanging heads did seem his careful case to weep.
COLIN'S EMBLEME. _Ancora speme._ (Hope is my anchor.)
This Æglogue is rather moral and general than bent to any secret or particular purpose. It specially containeth a discourse of old age, in the person of Thenot, an old shepheard, who, for his crookedness and unlustiness, is scorned of Cuddie, an unhappy herdman's boy. The matter very well accordeth with the season of the moneth, the year now drooping, and as it were drawing to his last age. For as in this time of year, so then in our bodies, there is a dry and withering cold, which congealeth the curdled blood, and freezeth the weather-beaten flesh, with storms of Fortune and hoar-frosts of Care. To which purpose the old man telleth a tale of the Oak and the Brier, so lively, and so feelingly, as, if the thing were set forth in some picture before our eyes, more plainly could not appear.