| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | To His Lute | | By William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) |
| | | MY 1 lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow | |
| With thy green mother in some shady grove, | |
| When immelodious winds but made thee move, | |
| And birds on thee their ramage 2 did bestow. | |
| Sith that dear voice which did thy sounds approve, | 5 |
| Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow, | |
| Is reft from earth to tune those spheres above, | |
| What art thou but a harbinger of woe? | |
| Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more, | |
| But orphans’ waitings to the fainting ear; | 10 |
| Each stop a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear; | |
| Be therefore silent as in woods before; | |
| Or if that any hand to touch thee deign, | |
| Like widow’d turtle, still her loss complain. | |
| | | Note 1. From Poems, Amorous, Funeral, etc., Part II., 1616. [back] | | Note 2. Ramage: music of the bough, woodland song. [back] | | |
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