Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 18801918. Vol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden | | Extracts from Britannias Pastorals: The Music Lesson | By William Browne (c. 1590c. 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, Arts chiefest due, | 10 |
She gains that charming skill: and can no less | |
Tame the fierce walkers of the wilderness, | |
Than that agrian 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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