Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

A Passion of My Lord of Essex

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (1565–1601)

HAPPY were he could finish forth his fate

In some unhaunted desert, most obscure

From all society, from love and hate

Of worldly folk, there might he sleep secure;

There wake again, and give God ever praise,

Content with hips and haws and brambleberry,

In contemplation passing still his days,

And change of holy thoughts to make him merry.

That when he dies, his tomb might be a bush,

Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush.