| |
| WHILE in this park I sing, the listening deer | |
| Attend my passion, and forget to fear; | |
| When to the beeches I report my flame, | |
| They bow their heads, as if they felt the same. | |
| To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers | 5 |
| With loud complaints, they answer me in showers. | |
| To thee a wild and cruel soul is given, | |
| More deaf than trees, and prouder than the heaven! | |
| Love’s foe professed! why dost thou falsely feign | |
| Thyself a Sidney? from which noble strain | 10 |
| He sprung, that could so far exalt the name | |
| Of Love, and warm our nation with his flame, | |
| That all we can of love or high desire | |
| Seems but the smoke of amorous Sidney’s fire. | |
| Nor call her mother who so well does prove | 15 |
| One breast may hold both chastity and love. | |
| Never can she, that so exceeds the spring | |
| In joy and bounty, be supposed to bring | |
| One so destructive. To no human stock | |
| We owe this fierce unkindness, but the rock; | 20 |
| That cloven rock produced thee, by whose side | |
| Nature, to recompense the fatal pride | |
| Of such stern beauty, placed those healing springs | |
| Which not more help than that destruction brings. | |
| Thy heart no ruder than the rugged stone, | 25 |
| I might, like Orpheus, with my numerous moan | |
| Melt to compassion; now my traitorous song | |
| With thee conspires to do the singer wrong; | |
| While thus I suffer not myself to lose | |
| The memory of what augments my woes, | 30 |
| But with my own breath still foment the fire, | |
| Which flames as high as fancy can aspire! | |
| This last complaint the indulgent ears did pierce | |
| Of just Apollo, president of verse; | |
| Highly concernéd that the Muse should bring | 35 |
| Damage to one whom he had taught to sing, | |
| Thus he advised me: “On yon aged tree | |
| Hang up thy lute, and hie thee to the sea, | |
| That there with wonders thy diverted mind | |
| Some truce, at least, may with this passion find.” | 40 |
| Ah, cruel nymph! from whom her humble swain | |
| Flies for relief unto the raging main, | |
| And from the winds and tempests does expect | |
| A milder fate than from her cold neglect! | |
| Yet there he ’ll pray that the unkind may prove | 45 |
| Blest in her choice; and vows this endless love | |
| Springs from no hope of what she can confer, | |
| But from those gifts which Heaven has heaped on her. | |
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