M Y Lute, bee as thou wast, when thou didst grow
With thy greene mother in fome shadie grove,
When immelodious windes but made thee move,
And birds on thee their ramage did bestow.
Sith that deare voyce, which did thy founds approve
Which used in such harmonious straines to flow,
Is reft from Earth to tune those spheares above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more,
But orphane wailings to the fainting eare,
Each stoppe a figh, each found drawes foorth a teare,
Be therefore filent as in woods before,
Or if that any hand to touch thee daigne,
Like widow'd Turtle still her loffe complaine.
Drummond, Edin. Ed. 1616.
CARE-charmer Sleep, Son of the fable Night,
Brother to Death, in filent darkness born :
Relieve my languish, and restore the light;
With dark forgetting of my care, return.
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The Shipwreck of my ill-advised Youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their fcorn,
Without the torments of the night's untruth.
Cease, dreams, the images of day-defires,
To model forth the paffions of the morrow;
Never let rising Sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my forrow.
Still let me fleep, embracing clouds in vain';
And never wake to feel the day's disdain.
M
Y heart was flain, and none but you and I;
Who should I think the murder should commit ?
Since but yourself there was no creature by,
But only I; guiltless of murd'ring it.
It flew itself; the verdict on the view
Do quit the dead, and me not accessary :
Well, well, I fear it will be prov'd by you,
The evidence so great a proof doth carry.
But O, see, see, we need enquire no further,
Upon your lips the scarlet drops are found,
And in your eye the Boy that did the murder,
Your cheeks yet pale, since first he gave the wound.
By this I fee, however things be past,
Yet Heaven will still have murder out at last.
A LEXIS, here shee stay'd, among these pines
(Sweet Hermitresse) shee did alone repaire,
Here did she spreade the treasure of her haire,
More rich than that brought from the Cholchian mines.
She fet her by these musket Eglantines;
The happie place the print seemes yet to beare,
Her voyce did sweeten here thy fugred lines,
To which windes, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their eare;
Mee here she first perceiv'd, and here a morne
Of bright carnations did orespreade her face,
Here did shee figh, there firit my hopes were borne,
And I first got a pledge of promis'd grace:
But ah! what serv'd it to be happie so?
Sith paffed pleasures double but new woe.
UNTO the boundless Ocean of thy Beauty,
Runs this poor River, charg'd with streams of zea,
Returning thee the tribute of my duty,
Which here my Love, my Youth, my Plaints reveal.
Here I unclasp the Book of my charg'd foul,
Where I have casuth' Accounts of all my care:
Here have I fumm'd my fighs; here I enroll
How they were spent for thee; look what they are,
Look on the dear expences of my Youth,
And fee how just I reckon with thine eyes :
Examine well thy beauty with my truth;
And cross my cares, ere greater sums arife.
Read it, sweet Maid, tho' it be done but flightly;
Who can shew all his Love, doth love but lightly.
RUST not, sweet Soule, those curled waves of gold
With gentle tides which on your temples flow,
Nor temples spread with flackes of virgine snow,
Nor snow of cheekes with Tyrian graine enroll'd.
Trust not those shining lights which wrought my woe,
When first I did their burning rayes beholde,
Nor voyce, whose sounds more strange effects doe show
Than of the Thracian Harper have beene tolde:
Looke to this dying Lille, fading Rose,
Darke Hyacinthe, of late whose blushing beames
Made all the neighbouring herbes and grafse rejoyce,
And thinke how little is twixt Life's extreames :
The cruell Tyrant that did kill those flow'rs,
Shall once (aye mee!) not spare that Spring of yours.
Drummond, Edinb. 1616,
OVE banish'd Heaven, in Earth
Wand'ring abroad in need and beggary;
And wanting friends, tho' of a Goddess born,
Yet crav'd the alms of such as passed by:
I, like a man devout and charitable,
Cloathed the naked, lodg'd this wand'ring guest,
With fighs and teares still furnishing his table,
With what might make the miferable blest :
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