Edward Farr, ed. Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1845.
Lines from The Tragedie of PhilotasLIX. Samuel Daniel
W
Did my last sleepe my griev’d soul intertaine!
I dreamt, yet O, dreames are but frivolous;
And yet I’le tell it, and God graunte in vaine.
Me thought a mighty hippopotamus,
From Nilus floting, thrusts into the maine,
Upon whose back a wanton mermaid sate,
As if she rul’d his course and steer’d his fate;
Alike in kind, of strength and poure as good,
At whose ingrappling Neptune’s mantle takes
A purple colour, dyde with streames of bloud;
Whereat this looker-on, amaz’d, forsakes
Her champion there, who yet the better stood;
But se’ing her gone, straight after her he hies,
As if his hart and strength laye in her eies.
Whereof th’ event forsooke me with the night;
But my wak’d cares gave me these shadowes were
Drawne but from darknes to instruct the light;
These secret figures Nature’s message beare
Of comming woes, were they deciphered right;
But if as cloudes of sleepe thou shalt them take,
Yet credit wrath and spight, that are awake.
If lust and thy ambition have left way
But to looke out, and have not shut all in,
To stop thy iudgment from a true survay
Of thy estate; and let thy harte within
Consider in what danger thou dost lay
Thy life and mine, to leave the good thou hast,
To follow hopes with shadowes ou’rcast.
Possesse thine owne with right, with truth, with peace;
Breake from these snares, thy iudgment unbeguile,
Free thine owne torment, and my griefe release.
But whither am I carried all this while?
Beyond my scope, and know not when to cease:
Words still with my increasing sorrowes grow;
I know t’ have said too much, but not ynow.
To thee the hart that’s thine, and so I end.