Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

William Browne (c. 1590–c. 1645)

Extracts from Britannia’s Pastorals: The Poet’s Ambition

Book I. Song 5.

A TRUER love the Muses never sung,

Nor happier names e’er graced a golden tongue:

O! they are better fitting his sweet stripe,

Who on the banks of Ancor tuned his pipe:

Or rather for that learned swain, whose lays

Divinest Homer crowned with deathless bays;

Or any one sent from the sacred well

Inheriting the soul of Astrophell:

These, these in golden lines might write this story,

And make these loves their own eternal glory:

Whilst I, a swain, as weak in years as skill,

Should in the valley hear them on the hill.

Yet when my sheep have at the cistern been

And I have brought them back to shear the green,

To miss an idle hour, and not for meed,

With choicest relish shall mine oaten reed

Record their worths: and though in accents rare

I miss the glory of a charming air,

My Muse may one day make the courtly swains

Enamoured on the music of the plains,

And as upon a hill she bravely sings

Teach humble dales to weep in crystal springs.