William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649). Alexis, Here She Stayed, among These Pines. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1907. The Book of Elizabethan Verse

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William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

Alexis, Here She Stayed, among These Pines

By William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649)


ALEXIS, 1 here she stayed; among these pines,
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair;
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines;
She set her by these muskèd eglantines,—	5
The happy place the print seems yet to bear;—
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugared lines,
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend an ear;
Me here she first perceived, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o’erspread her face;	10
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,
And I first got a pledge of promised grace;
But ah! what served it to be happy so,
Sith passèd pleasures double but new woe?

Note 1. This, and the following sonnet (No. 535), are numbered lx. and lxix., in Songs, Sonnets, etc. Cunningham’s ed., 1833. In them the poet mourns the death of his mistress. For account of Drummond’s love see Masson’s Life of Drummond, pp. 46–52. Line 1, Alexis: Name by which Drummond addressed his friend, William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. [back]

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