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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Extracts from Britannia’s Pastorals: Marina and the River-God

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

William Browne (c. 1590–c. 1645)

Extracts from Britannia’s Pastorals: Marina and the River-God

Book I. Song 1.

THE FALL of her did make the god below,

Starting, to wonder whence that noise should grow:

Whether some ruder clown in spite did fling

A lamb, untimely fall’n, into his spring:

And if it were, he solemnly then swore

His spring should flow some other way: no more

Should it in wanton manner e’er be seen

To writhe in knots, or give a gown of green

Unto their meadows, nor be seen to play,

Nor drive the rushy-mills, that in his way

The shepherds made: but rather for their lot

Send them red water that their sheep should rot.

And with such moorish springs embrace their field

That it should nought but moss and rushes yield.

Upon each hillock where the merry boy

Sits piping in the shades his notes of joy,

He ’d show his anger by some flood at hand

And turn the same into a running sand.

*****

Thus spake the god: but when as in the water

The corpse came sinking down, he spied the matter,

And catching softly in his arms the maid

He brought her up, and having gently laid

Her on his bank, did presently command

Those waters in her to come forth: at hand

They straight came gushing out, and did contest

Which chiefly should obey their god’s behest.

This done, her then pale lips he straight did ope

And from his silver hair let fall a drop

Into her mouth, of such an excellence,

That called back life, which grieved to part from thence

Being for troth assur’d that than this one

She ne’er possess’d a fairer mansion.

Then did the god her body forwards steep,

And cast her for a while into a sleep;

Sitting still by her did his full view take

Of nature’s master-piece. Here for her sake

My pipe in silence as of right shall mourn,

Till from the watering we again return.