A Dialogue Between Two Sisters, Virgins Bewailing Their Solitary Life

Come, my dear sister, sit with me awhile
That we both time and sorrow may beguile2
.
In this sweet shade, by this clear purling3
 spring,
We’ll sit and help poor Philomel4
 to sing;
And to complete the consort5
 and the choir,
I would I had my viol, you your lyre6
.
Ay me, my sister! Time on restless wheels
Doth ever turn with wings upon his heels,
Fast as the sand that huddles through his glass7
;
Regardless of our tears, he on doth pass.
Yet in the shade of this sad sycamore8
We’ll sit, our wants and losses to deplore9
;
For all things here which do in order10
 rise,
Methinks in woe with us do sympathize.
These cypress11
, like our hopes, do lesser grow;
This bubbling fount, like our sad eyes, does flow,
And though it doth a greater murmuring keep,
Yet we may teach this living spring to weep12
.
These primroses, like us, neglected fade,
And violets sit weeping in the shade.
With us sad Hyacinthus13
 sighs out, “ay!”
And lovely Amarantha14
 doth display
Her beauties here to no admiring eye.
Just so, obliviated15
, we live and die;
And for your viol and my theorbo lute16
,
They both, unstrung, upon the wall hang mute,
And in a unison will scarcely move,
They’re so unused (ay me) to strains of love.
With Philomel we may lament too late
Our most disastrous, and too differing, fate17
.
O my sad heart, would we might pass our hours
As innocently contented as these flowers,
Who show their beauties to admiring eyes,
Then breathing18
 aromatic odors, dies.
Come, my dear Nan19
, in this sad shade we’ll lie,
And, like them, sweetly live and sweetly die.
Adonis’ blood the anemone uprears20
.
Who knows? Such virtue may be in our tears:
These violets, primrose, pales21
 which appears,
Perhaps their number springs from virgins’ tears.
O me, I would I might this very hour
Sigh my sad soul into this gillyflower22
.
Trust me, I gladly would transmigrate23
,
That my afflicted life might have a date24
.
But we (alas) in sad obscurity
Must hopeless live, and so, I doubt25
, must die.
O that a recluse life had been my fate,
To take our visits at a courteous grate26
.
Stay, my dear sister, I have no mind to die;
A little more of this base world I’ll try27
;
And if what’s future prove28
 like what is past,
I’ll patient be; I can but die at last.
Then let us cease in vain to make our moan,
And go to our sad mother; she’s alone.

No results