Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.
Vol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden | | | | Extracts from Britannia’s Pastorals: The Music Lesson | | By William Browne (c. 1590–c. 1645) |
| | Book I. Song 5.
AS when a maid taught from her mother wing, | |
| To tune her voice unto a silver string, | |
| When she should run, she rests; rests when should run, | |
| And ends her lesson having now begun: | |
| Now misseth she her stop, then in her song, | 5 |
| And doing of her best she still is wrong, | |
| Begins again, and yet again strikes false, | |
| Then in a chafe forsakes her virginals, | |
| And yet within an hour she tries anew, | |
| That with her daily pains, Art’s chiefest due, | 10 |
| She gains that charming skill: and can no less | |
| Tame the fierce walkers of the wilderness, | |
| Than that Œagrian harpist, for whose lay, | |
| Tigers with hunger pined and left their prey. | |
| So Riot, when he gan to climb the hill, | 15 |
| Here maketh haste and there long standeth still, | |
| Now getteth up a step, then falls again, | |
| Yet not despairing all his nerves doth strain | |
| To clamber up anew, then slide his feet, | |
| And down he comes: but gives not over yet, | 20 |
| For, with the maid, he hopes a time will be | |
| When merit shall be linked with industry. | | | | |
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