sheet, contains stanzas (one
on each page), numbered 5, 6, 7, 8. 13, 14.; and the earliest of them is
this:--
"To you I therefore weepe: To you alone
I shew the image of your teares, in mine;
That mine (by shewing your teares) may be show'n
To be like yours, so faithfull so divine:
Such as more make the publique woe their owne,
Then their woe publique, such as not confine
Themselves to times, nor yet forms from examples borrow:
Where losse is infinit, there boundlesse is the sorrow."
I have preserved even the printer's punctuation, for the sake of more
perfect identification, if any of your readers are acquainted with the
existence of a copy of the production, or of any portion of it. The
above stanza, being numbered "5," of course it was preceded by four
others, of which I can give no account. Another stanza, from this
literary and bibliographical rarity, may not be unacceptable; it is the
eighth--
"Here then run forth thou River of my woes
In cease lesse currents of complaining verse:
Here weepe (young Muse) while elder pens compose
More solemne Rites unto his sacread Hearse.
And, as when happy earth did, here, enclose
His heavn'ly minde, his Fame then Heav'n did pierce.
Now He in Heav'n doth rest, now let his Fame earth fill;
So, both him then posses'd: so both possesse him still."
Therefore, although Basse had written his _Sword and Buckler_ in 1602
(if it were the same man), he still called his Muse "young" in 1613.
Pages:
17
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