"But, ah! such pride at length was ill repaid; The shepheard's god (perdie, god was he none) My hurtless pleasance did me ill upbraid, My freedom lorn, my life he left to moan. Love they him called that gave me check-mate, But better might they have behote him Hate. "Then gan my lovely spring bid me farewell, And summer season sped him to display (For Love then in the Lion's house did dwell,) The raging fire that kindled at his ray. A comet stirr'd up that unkindly heat, That reigned (as men said) in Venus' seat. "Forth was I led, not as I wont afore, When choice I had to choose my wand'ring way, But whether luck and love's unbridled lore Would lead me forth on Fancy's bit to play: The bush my bed, the bramble was my bower, The woods can witness many a woful stowre. "Where I was wont to seek the honey bee, Working her formal rooms in waxen frame, The grisly toadstool grown there might I see, And loathed paddocks lording on the same: And, where the chanting birds lull'd me asleep, The ghastly owl her grievous inn doth keep. "Then as the spring gives place to elder Time, And bringeth forth the fruit of summer's pride; All so my age, now passed youthly prime, To things of riper season self applied, And learn'd of lighter timber cotes to frame, Such as might save my sheep and me fro shame. "To make fine cages for the nightingale, And baskets of bulrushes, was my wont: Who to entrap the fish in winding sale Was better seen, or hurtful beasts to hont? I learned als the signs of heaven to ken, How Phœbus fails, where Venus sets, and when. "And tried time yet taught me greater things; The sudden rising of the raging seas, The sooth of birds by beating of their wings, The power of herbs, both which can hurt and ease, And which be wont t' enrage the restless sheep, And which be wont to work eternal sleep. "But, ah! unwise and witless Colin Clout, That kydst the hidden kinds of many a weed, Yet kydst not one to cure thy sore heart-root, Whose rankling wound as yet does rifely bleed. Why livest thou still, and yet hast thy death's wound? Why diest thou still, and yet alive art found? "Thus is my summer worn away and wasted, Thus is my harvest hastened all-to rathe; The ear that budded fair is burnt and blasted, And all my hoped gain is turn'd to scathe. Of all the seed, that in my youth was sown, Was none but brakes and brambles to be mown. "My boughs with blooms that crowned were at first, And promised of timely fruit such store, Are left both bare and barren now at erst; The flattering fruit is fallen to ground before, And rotted ere they were half mellow ripe; My harvest, waste, my hope away did wipe.