Unto a pleasant grove or such like place, Where here the curious cutting of a hedge: There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge: Here the fine setting of well-shading trees: The walks there mounting up by small degrees, The gravel and the green so equal lie, It, with the rest, draws on your ling'ring eye: Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air, Arising from the infinite repair Of odoriferous buds and herbs of price, (As if it were another Paradise) So please the smelling sense, that you are fain Where last you walk'd to turn and walk again. There the small birds with their harmonious notes Sing to a spring that smileth as she floats: For in her face a many dimples show, And often skips as it did dancing go: Here further down an over-arched alley, That from a hill goes winding in a valley, You spy at end thereof a standing lake, Where some ingenious artist strives to make The water (brought in turning pipes of lead Through birds of earth most lively fashioned) To counterfeit and mock the sylvans all, In singing well their own set madrigal. This with no small delight retains your ear, And makes you think none blest but who live there. Then in another place the fruits that be In gallant clusters decking each good tree, Invite your hand to crop some from the stem, And liking one, taste every sort of them: Then to the arbours walk, then to the bowers, Thence to the walks again, thence to the flowers, Then to birds, and to the clear spring thence, Now pleasing one, and then another sense. Here one walks oft, and yet anew begin'th, As if it were some hidden labyrinth; So loath to part and so content to stay, That when the gard'ner knocks for you away, It grieves you so to leave the pleasures in it, That you could wish that you had never seen it. From _Britannia's Pastorals_. An Angler Now as an angler melancholy standing Upon a green bank yielding room for landing, A wriggling yellow worm thrust on his hook, Now in the midst he throws, then in a nook: Here pulls his line, there throws it in again, Mendeth his cork and bait, but all in vain, He long stands viewing of the curled stream; At last a hungry pike, or well-grown bream Snatch at the worm, and hasting fast away, He knowing it a fish of stubborn sway, Pulls up his rod, but soft, as having skill, Wherewith the hook fast holds the fish's gill; Then all his line he freely yieldeth him, Whilst furiously all up and down doth swim Th' insnared fish, here on the top doth scud, There underneath the banks, then in the mud, And with his frantic fits so scares the shoal, That each one takes his hide, or starting hole: By this the pike, clean wearied, underneath A willow lies. From _Britannia's Pastorals_. A Rill