<20.4> Original has BELIEFE.
<<20.5>> Soft, like floss.
ORPHEUS TO WOODS. SONG. SET BY MR. CURTES.
Heark! Oh heark! you guilty trees,
In whose gloomy galleries
Was the cruell'st murder done,
That e're yet eclipst the sunne.
Be then henceforth in your twigges
Blasted, e're you sprout to sprigges;
Feele no season of the yeere,
But what shaves off all your haire,
Nor carve any from your wombes
Ought but coffins and their tombes.
ORPHEUS<21.1> TO BEASTS.
SONG.
SET BY MR. CURTES.<21.2>
I.
Here, here, oh here! EURIDICE,
Here was she slaine;
Her soule 'still'd through a veine:
The gods knew lesse
That time divinitie,
Then ev'n, ev'n these
Of brutishnesse.
II.
Oh! could you view the melodie
Of ev'ry grace,
And musick of her face,<21.3>
You'd drop a teare,
Seeing more harmonie
In her bright eye,
Then now you heare.
<21.1> By Orpheus we may perhaps understand Lovelace himself, and by Euridice, the lady whom he celebrates under the name of Lucasta. Grainger mentions (BIOG. HIST. ii. 74) a portrait of Lovelace by Gaywood, in which he is represented as Orpheus. I have not seen it. The old poets were rather fond of likening themselves to this legendary personage, or of designating themselves his poetical children:—
"We that are ORPHEUS' sons, and can inherit
By that great title"—
Davenant's WORKS, 1673, p. 215.
Many other examples might be given. Massinger, in his CITY MADAM, 1658, makes Sir John Frugal introduce a representation of the story of the Thracian bard at an entertainment given to Luke Frugal.