Come forth ye nymphs! come forth! forsake your watery bowers! Forsake your mossy caves; and help me to lament. Help me to tune my doleful notes to gurgling sound Of Liffey's tumbling streams. Come let salt tears of ours, Mix with his waters fresh. O come let one consent Join us to mourn with wailful plaints the deadly wound Which fatal clap hath made, decreed by higher powers; The dreary day in which they have from us yrent The noblest plant that might from East to West be found. Mourn! mourn great PHILIP'S fall! mourn we his woeful end, Whom spiteful death hath plucked untimely from the tree; While yet his years in flower did promise worthy fruit. Ah, dreadful MARS! why didst thou not thy knight defend? What wrathful mood, what fault of ours hath moved thee, Of such a shining light to leave us destitute? Thou with benign aspect sometime didst us behold. Thou hast in Britons' valour ta'en delight of old, And with thy presence oft vouchsafed to attribute Fame and renown to us, for glorious martial deeds: But now their ireful beams have chilled our hearts with cold. Thou hast estranged thyself and deignest not our land: Far off to others now, thy favour, honour breeds; And high disdain doth cause thee shun our clime, I fear. For hadst thou not been wroth, or that time near at hand; Thou wouldst have heard the cry that woeful England made: Eke Zealand's piteous plaints, and Holland's toren hair Would haply have appeased thy divine angry mind. Thou shouldst have seen the trees refuse to yield their shade And wailing to let fall the honour of their head, And birds in mournful tunes lamenting in their kind. Up from his tomb, the mighty CORINEUS rose, Who cursing oft the fates that this mishap had bred, His hoary locks he tare, calling the heavens unkind. The Thames was heard to roar, the Rhine, and eke the Meuse, The Scheldt, the Danow self this great mischance did rue: With torment and with grief, their fountains pure and clear Were troubled; and with swelling floods declared their woes. The Muses comfortless, the nymphs with pallid hue; The sylvan gods likewise came running far and near; And all, with hearts bedewed, and eyes cast up on high, "O help! O help, ye gods!" they ghastly 'gan to cry, "O change the cruel fate of this so rare a wight And grant that nature's course may measure out his age!" The beasts their food forsook, and trembling fearfully, Each sought his cave or den. This cry did them so fright. Out from amid the waves, by storm then stirred to rage, This cry did cause to rise th'old father OCEAN hoar, Who grave with eld, and full of majesty in sight, Spake in this wise, "Refrain," quoth he, "your tears and plaints! Cease these your idle words! Make vain requests no more! No humble speech nor moan may move the fixèd stint