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: A Colour Passage

Book II. Song 3.

AS in the rainbow’s many-coloured hue,

Here see we watchet deepened with a blue;

There a dark tawny with a purple mixt,

Yellow and flame, with streaks of green betwixt,

A bloody stream into a blushing run,

And ends still with the colour which begun;

Drawing the deeper to a lighter stain,

Bringing the lightest to the deep’st again,

With such rare art each mingleth with his fellow,

The blue with watchet, green and red with yellow;

Like to the changes which we daily see

About the dove’s neck with variety,

Where none can say, though he it strict attends,

Here one begins, and there the other ends:

So did the maidens with their various flowers

Deck up their windows, and make neat their bowers;

Using such cunning as they did dispose

The ruddy piny with the lighter rose,

The monk’s-hoods with the bugloss, and entwine

The white, the blue, the flesh-like columbine

With pinks, sweet-williams: that far off the eye

Could not the manner of their mixtures spy.