ANOTHER TO THE RIVER ANKOR

    LIII

    Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore,
    My soul-shrined saint, my fair Idea lives;
    O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore
    Thy crystal stream, refined by her eyes,
      Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the spring
    Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers,
    Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing
    Amongst the dainty dew-impearled flowers;
      Say thus, fair brook, when thou shalt see thy queen,
    “Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wand’ring years
    And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft hath been;
    And here to thee he sacrificed his tears.” 
      Fair Arden, thou my Tempe art alone,
      And thou, sweet Ankor, art my Helicon!

    LIV

    Yet read at last the story of my woe,
    The dreary abstracts of my endless cares,
    With my life’s sorrow interlined so,
    Smoked with my sighs, and blotted with my tears,
      The sad memorials of my miseries,
    Penned in the grief of mine afflicted ghost,
    My life’s complaint in doleful elegies,
    With so pure love as time could never boast. 
      Receive the incense which I offer here,
    By my strong faith ascending to thy fame,
    My zeal, my hope, my vows, my praise, my prayer,
    My soul’s oblations to thy sacred name;
      Which name my Muse to highest heavens shall raise,
    By chaste desire, true love, and virtuous praise.

    LV

    My fair, if thou wilt register my love,
    A world of volumes shall thereof arise;
    Preserve my tears, and thou thyself shall prove
    A second flood down raining from mine eyes;
      Note but my sighs, and thine eyes shall behold
    The sunbeams smothered with immortal smoke;
    And if by thee my prayers may be enrolled,
    They heaven and earth to pity shall provoke. 
      Look thou into my breast, and thou shalt see
    Chaste holy vows for my soul’s sacrifice,
    That soul, sweet maid, which so hath honoured thee,
    Erecting trophies to thy sacred eyes,
      Those eyes to my heart shining ever bright,
      When darkness hath obscured each other light.

AN ALLUSION TO THE EAGLETS

    LVI

    When like an eaglet I first found my love,
    For that the virtue I thereof would know,
    Upon the nest I set it forth to prove
    If it were of that kingly kind or no;
      But it no sooner saw my sun appear,
    But on her rays with open eyes it stood,
    To show that I had hatched it for the air,
    And rightly came from that brave mounting brood;
      And when the plumes were summed with sweet desire,
    To prove the pinions it ascends the skies;
    Do what I could, it needsly would aspire
    To my soul’s sun, those two celestial eyes. 
      Thus from my breast, where it was bred alone,
      It after thee is like an eaglet flown.