Читать книгу Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham - Edmund Waller - Страница 16

Hear then, and let your song augment our grief,

Which is so great as not to wish relief.

She that had all which Nature gives, or Chance,

Whom Fortune join'd with Virtue to advance

To all the joys this island could afford,

The greatest mistress, and the kindest lord;

Who with the royal mix'd her noble blood,

And in high grace with Gloriana[2] stood; 20

Her bounty, sweetness, beauty, goodness, such,

That none e'er thought her happiness too much;

So well-inclined her favours to confer,

And kind to all, as Heaven had been to her!

The virgin's part, the mother, and the wife,

So well she acted in this span of life,

That though few years (too flew, alas!) she told,

She seem'd in all things, but in beauty, old.

As unripe fruit, whose verdant stalks do cleave

Close to the tree, which grieves no less to leave 30

The smiling pendant which adorns her so,

And until autumn on the bough should grow;

So seem'd her youthful soul not eas'ly forced,

Or from so fair, so sweet a seat divorced.

Her fate at once did hasty seem and slow;

At once too cruel, and unwilling too.