dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Verse  »  228. Spring Bereaved 3

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

William Drummond, of Hawthornden. 1585–1649

228. Spring Bereaved 3

ALEXIS, here she stay’d; among these pines, 
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair; 
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair, 
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines. 
She set her by these muskèd eglantines,         5
—The happy place the print seems yet to bear: 
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar’d lines, 
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear. 
Me here she first perceived, and here a morn 
Of bright carnations did o’erspread her face;  10
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born, 
And I first got a pledge of promised grace: 
  But ah! what served it to be happy so? 
  Sith passèd pleasures double but new woe?