Page:Breton Wither Browne.djvu/33

 Though thou be to them a scorn That to nought but earth are born Let my life no longer be Than I am in love with thee. Though our wise ones call thee madness, Let me never taste of gladness, If I love not thy maddest fits More than all their greatest wits. And though some, too seeming holy, Do account thy raptures folly, Thou dost teach me to contemn What makes knaves and fools of them.

pretty rills do meet, and meeting make Within one valley a large silver lake: About whose banks the fertile mountains stood In ages passèd bravely crowned with wood, Which lending cold-sweet shadows gave it grace To be accounted Cynthia's bathing-place; And from her father Neptune's brackish court, Fair Thetis thither often would resort, Attended by the fishes of the sea, Which in those sweeter waters came to plea. There would the daughter of the Sea God dive, And thither came the Land Nymphs every eve To wait upon her: bringing for her brows Rich garlands of sweet flowers and beechy boughs. For pleasant was that pool, and near it then Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen, It was nor overgrown with boisterous sedge, Nor grew there rudely then along the edge A bending willow, nor a prickly bush, Nor broad-leaved flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush. But here well-ordered was a grove with bowers, There grassy plots set round about with flowers. Here you might through the water see the land Appear, strowed o'er with white or yellow sand;