Nought could my thrist appease,
I wist I could not walk alone,
I was so grievously o’er-gone,
Thro’ drouth of my disease,
Yet weakly as I might I rose,
In darkness and in doubt,
I stagger’d at the windle-straws,
No token I was stout;
Now sp’ritless and mightless
I wrestle as I may,
In anguish to languish
And wend my weary way.
XXII.
With sober pace approaching near,
Where from the rock the river clear,
Of which I spake before,
Ran swiftly murmuring among
The pebbles as it past along
The flow’ry fringed shore;
Me Pleasure and Desire provoke,
Impatient to repair
Between the river and the rock,
Where Hope dwelt with Despair,
On high then, I spy then,
A Cherry tree there grows;
Below too, did grow too,
A bush of bitter Sloes.
XXIII.
The Cherries hung above my head,
Like twinkling rubies round and red;
So high upon the bank,
Whose shadows in the river shew.
As gayly glittering as they grew,
In clusters ripe and rank;
The boughs thro’ burden of their birth,
Declining down their tops,
Reflex of Phoebus off the Firth,
New-coloured all their knops;
With dancing and glancing,
