This Æglogue (even as the first began) is ended with a complaint of Colin to god Pan; wherein, as weary of his former ways, he proportioned his life to the four seasons of the year; comparing his youth to the spring time, when he was fresh and free from love's folly. His manhood to the summer, which, he saith, was consumed with great heat and excessive drouth, caused through a comet or blazing star, by which he meaneth love; which passion is commonly compared to such flames and immoderate heat. His ripest years he resembleth to an unseasonable harvest, wherein the fruits fall ere they be ripe. His latter age to winter's chill and frosty season, now drawing near to his last end. The gentle shepheard sat beside a spring, All in the shadow of a bushy brere, That Colin hight, which well could pipe and sing, For he of Tityrus his song did lere: There, as he sat in secret shade alone, Thus gan he make of love his piteous moan. "O sovereign Pan! thou god of shepheards all, Which of our tender lambkins takest keep, And, when our flocks into mischance might fall, Dost save from mischief the unwary sheep, Als of their masters hast no less regard Than of the flocks, which thou dost watch and ward; "I thee beseech (so be thou deign to hear Rude ditties, tun'd to shepheard's oaten reed, Or if I ever sonnet sung so clear, As it with pleasance might thy fancy feed,) Hearken a while, from thy green cabinet, The rural song of careful Colinet. "Whilome in youth, when flower'd my joyful spring, Like swallow swift I wander'd here and there; For heat of heedless lust me so did sting, That I of doubted danger had no fear: I went the wasteful woods and forest wide, Withouten dread of wolves to be espied. "I wont to range amid the mazy thicket, And gather nuts to make my Christmas-game, And joyed oft to chase the trembling pricket, Or hunt the heartless hare till she were tame. What recked I of wintry age's waste?-- Then deemed I my spring would ever last. "How often have I scaled the craggy oak, All to dislodge the raven of her nest? How have I wearied, with many a stroke, The stately walnut-tree, the while the rest Under the tree fell all for nuts at strife? For like to me was liberty and life. "And for I was in thilk same looser years, (Whether the Muse so wrought me from my birth, Or I too much believ'd my shepheard peers,) Somedele ybent to song and music's mirth, A good old shepheard, Wrenock was his name, Made me by art more cunning in the same. "Fro thence I durst in derring to compare With shepheard's swain whatever fed in field; And, if that Hobbinol right judgment bare, To Pan his own self pipe I need not yield: For, if the flocking nymphs did follow Pan, The wiser Muses after Colin ran.