Adieu
Fair Shepherdesses!
Let garlands of sad yew
Adorn your dainty golden tresses!
I that loved you, and often, with my quill
Made music that delighted fountain, grove, and hill!
I, whom you loved so; and with a sweet and chaste embrace;
Yea, with a thousand rarer favours, would vouchsafe to grace!
I, now, must leave you all alone! of Love to 'plain,
And never Pipe, nor never Sing again
I must, for evermore, be gone!
And, therefore, bid I you,
And every one,
Adieu!
I die!
For O, I feel
Death's horrors drawing nigh!
And all this frame of Nature reels!
My hopeless heart, despairing of relief,
Sinks underneath the heavy weight of saddest grief!
Which hath so ruthless torn, so racked, so tortured every vein,
All comfort comes too late, to have it ever cured again.
My swimming head begins to dance Death's giddy round!
A shuddering chillness doth each sense confound!
Benumbed is my cold-sweating brow!
A dimness shuts my eye!
And now, O now,
I die!
So movingly these lines he did express,
And to a tune so full of heaviness;
As if, indeed, his purpose had been past
To live no longer than the Song did last.
Which in the Nymphs, such tender passion bred,
That some of them, did tears of pity shed.
This she perceiving, who first craved the Song,
"Shepherd!" she said, "although it be no wrong
Nor grief to you, those Passions to recall
Which, heretofore, you have been pained withal!
But comforts rather, since they, now, are over;
And you, it seemeth, an enjoying lover:
Yet some Nymphs among us, I do see;
Who, so much movèd with your Passions be,
That, if my aim I have taken aright,
Their thoughts will hardly let them sleep to-night.
I dare not, therefore, beg of you again
To sing another of the selfsame Strain;
For fear it breed within them, more unrest
Than women's weaknesses can well digest.
Yet, in your Measures, such content you have!
That one Song more, I will presume to crave.
And if your memory preserves of those
Which you, of your affections did compose
Before you saw this Mistress; let us hear
What kind of Passions, then, within you were!"
To which request, he instantly obeyed;
And this ensuing Song, both sung and played.
SONNET II.
