Page:An English Garner Ingatherings from Our History and Literature (Volume 1 1877).pdf/265

Ah, wretched boy! the shape of drearihead!
And sad ensample of man's sudden end!
Full little faileth, but thou shalt be dead;
Unpitied, unplained of foe or friend:
Whilst none is nigh, thine eyelids up to close;
And kiss thy lips like faded leaves of rose.

A sort of shepherds suing of the chase,
As they the forest rangèd on a day;
By fate or fortune came unto the place,
Whereas the luckless boy yet bleeding lay.
Yet bleeding lay, and yet would still have bled,
Had not good hap those shepherds thither led.

They stopped his wound—too late to stop, it was,
And in their arms then softly did him rear:
Tho, as he willed, unto his lovèd lass,
His dearest love, him dolefully did bear.
The doleful'st bier that ever man did see
Was Astrophel, but dearest unto me.

She, when she saw her love in such a plight,
With curdled blood and filthy gore deformed;
That wont to be with flowers and garlands dight,
And her dear favours dearly well adorned.
Her face, the fairest face that eye might see,
She likewise did deform, like him to be.