Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. III. The Eighteenth Century: Addison to Blake
Thomas Chatterton (17521770)Eclogue the Third
W
Go, search the cots and lodges of the hind;
If they have any, it is rough-made art;
In them you see the naked form of kind.
Haveth your mind a liking of a mind?
Would it ken everything as it might be?
Would it hear phrase of vulgar from the hind,
Without wiseacre words and knowledge free?
If so, read this, which I disporting penn’d:
If nought beside, its rhyme may it commend.
O where do ye bend your way?
I will know whither you go,
I will not be answered nay.
To help them at making of hay.
Come, come, let us trip it away:
We’ll work, and we’ll sing, and we’ll drink of strong beer,
As long as the merry summer’s day.
Much is my woe!
Dame Agnes, who lies in the kirk,
With coif of gold,
With golden borders, strong, untold,
What was she more than me, to be so?
Tripping over the lea:
I will ask why the lordè’s son
Is more than me.
From every beam a seed of life doth fall.
Quickly heap up the hay upon the plain:
Methinks the cocks are ’ginning to grow tall.
This is alike our doom: the great, the small,
Must wither and be shrunken by death’s dart.
See, the sweet floweret hath no sweet at all;
It with the rank weed beareth equal part.
The craven, warrior, and the wise be blent
Alike to dry away with those they did lament.
By your priestship, now say unto me,
Sir Gaufryd the knight, who liveth hard by,
Why should he than me be more great
In honour, knighthood, and estate?
Attentively look o’er the sun-parched dell;
An answer to thy burden-song here see;
This withered floweret will a lesson tell:
It rose, it blew, it flourished and did well,
Looking askance upon the neighbour green;
Yet with the green disdained its glory fell,—
Eftsoons it shrank upon the day-burnt plain.
Did not its look, the while it there did stand,
To crop it in the bud move some dread hand?
Moveth the robber him therefore to slay.
If thou hast ease, the shadow of content,
Believe the truth, there’s none more whole than thee.
Thou workest: well, can that a trouble be?
Sloth more would jade thee than the roughest day.
Couldst thou the secret part of spirits see,
Thou wouldst eftsoons see truth in what I say.
But let me hear thy way of life, and then
Hear thou from me the lives of other men.
Like him to drive the wain,
And ere my work is done
I sing a song or twain.
I follow the plough-tail
With a long jubb of ale.
On every Saint’s high-day
With the minstrel am I seen,
All a-footing it away
With maidens on the green.
But oh! I wish to be more great
In worship, tenure, and estate.
Whose boundless branches reach afar to sight?
When furious tempests do the heaven fill,
It shaketh dire, in dole and much affright;
What while the humble floweret lowly dight
Standeth unhurt, unquashèd by the storm.
Such picture is of Life: the man of might
Is tempest-chafed, his woe great as his form:
Thyself, a floweret of a small account,
Wouldst harder feel the wind, as higher thou didst mount.