The Shepheard's Calender: Twelve Aeglogues Proportionable to the Twelve Monethes :: FEBRUARIE

FEBRUARIE - AEGLOGA SECUNDA

februarie

FEBRUARIE. ÆGLOGA SECUNDA. ARGUMENT.

This Æglogue is rather moral and general than bent to any secret or particular purpose. It specially containeth a discourse of old age, in the person of Thenot, an old shepheard, who, for his crookedness and unlustiness, is scorned of Cuddie, an unhappy herdman's boy. The matter very well accordeth with the season of the moneth, the year now drooping, and as it were drawing to his last age. For as in this time of year, so then in our bodies, there is a dry and withering cold, which congealeth the curdled blood, and freezeth the weather-beaten flesh, with storms of Fortune and hoar-frosts of Care. To which purpose the old man telleth a tale of the Oak and the Brier, so lively, and so feelingly, as, if the thing were set forth in some picture before our eyes, more plainly could not appear.

CUDDIE. THENOT.

CUDDIE.

Ah for pity! will rank winter's rage

These bitter blasts never gin t'assuage?

The keen cold blows through my beaten hide,

All as I were through the body gride:

My ragged ronts all shiver and shake,

As doen high towers in an earthquake:

They wont in the wind wag their wriggle tails

Perk as a peacock; but now it availes.

THE. Lewdly complainest, thou lazy lad,

Of winter's wrack for making thee sad.

Must not the world wend in his common course,

From good to bad, and from bad to worse,

From worse unto that is worst of all,

And then return to his former fall?

Who will not suffer the stormy time,

Where will he live till the lusty prime?

Self have I worn out thrice thirty years,

Some in much joy, many in many tears,

Yet never complained of cold nor heat,

Of summer's flame, nor of winter's threat,

Ne ever was to Fortune foeman,

But gently took that ungently came;

And ever my flock was my chief care;

Winter or summer they might well fare.

CUD. No marvel, Thenot, if thou can bear

Cheerfully the winter's wrathful cheer;

For age and winter accord full nigh,

This chill, that cold; this crooked, that wry;

And as the louring weather looks down,

So seemest thou like Good Friday3 to frown:

But my flow'ring youth is foe to frost,

My ship unwont in storms to be tost.

THE. The sovereign of seas he blames in vain,

That, once sea-beat, will to sea again:

So loit'ring live you little herdgrooms,

Keeping your beasts in the budded brooms;

And, when the shining sun laugheth once,

You deemen, the spring is come at once;

Then gin you, fond flies! the cold to scorn,

And, crowing in pipes made of green corn,

You thinken to be lords of the year;

But eft, when ye count you freed from fear,

Comes the breme Winter with chamfred brows,

Full of wrinkles and frosty furrows,

Drearily shooting his stormy dart,

Which curdles the blood and pricks the heart:

Then is your careless courage accoyed,

Your careful herds with cold be annoyed:

Then pay you the price of your surquedry,

With weeping, and wailing, and misery.

CUD. Ah! foolish old man! I scorn thy skill,

That wouldst me my springing youth to spill:

I deem thy brain emperished be

Through rusty eld, that hath rotted thee;

Or sicker thy head very totty is,

So on thy corb shoulder it leans amiss.

Now thyself hath lost both lop and top,

Als my budding branch thou wouldest crop;

But were thy years green, as now be mine,

To other delights they would incline:

Then wouldest thou learn to carol of love,

And hery with hymns thy lass's glove;

Then wouldest thou pipe of Phillis' praise;

But Phillis is mine for many days;

I won her with a girdle of gelt,

Embost with bugle about the belt:

Such an one shepheards would make full fain;

Such an one would make thee young again.

THE. Thou art a fon, of thy love to boast;

All that is lent to love will be lost.

CUD. Seest how brag yond bullock bears,

So smirk, so smooth, his pricked ears?

His horns be as broad as rainbow bent,

His dewlap as lithe as lass of Kent:

See how he venteth into the wind;

Weenest of love is not his mind?

Seemeth thy flock thy counsel can,

So lustless be they, so weak, so wan;

Clothed with cold, and hoary with frost,

Thy flock's father his courage hath lost.

Thy ewes, that wont to have blowen bags,

Like wailful widows hangen their crags;

The rather lambs be starved with cold,

All for their master is lustless and old.

THE. Cuddie, I wot thou kenst little good,

So vainly to advance thy heedlesshood;

For youth is a bubble blown up with breath,

Whose wit is weakness, whose wage is death,

Whose way is wilderness, whose inn penance,

And stoop-gallant Age, the host of Grievance.

But shall I tell thee a tale of truth,

Which I cond of Tityrus in my youth,

Keeping his sheep on the hills of Kent?

CUD. To nought more, Thenot, my mind is bent

Than to hear novels of his devise;

They be so well thewed, and so wise,

Whatever that good old man bespake.

THE. Many meet tales of youth did he make,

And some of love, and some of chivalry;

But none fitter than this to apply.

Now listen a while and hearken the end.

"There grew an aged tree on the green,

A goodly Oak sometime had it been,

With arms full strong and largely display'd,

But of their leaves they were disarray'd:

The body big, and mightily pight,

Throughly rooted, and of wondrous height;

Whilome had been the king of the field,

And mochell mast to the husband did yield,

And with his nuts larded many swine:

But now the gray moss marred his rine;

His bared boughs were beaten with storms,

His top was bald, and wasted with worms,

His honour decayed, his branches sere.

"Hard by his side grew a bragging Brere,

Which proudly thrust into th' element,

And seemed to threat the firmament:

It was embellish'd with blossoms fair,

And thereto aye wonted to repair

The shepheards' daughters to gather flowers,

To paint their garlands with his colours;

And in his small bushes used to shroud

The sweet nightingale singing so loud;

Which made this foolish Brere wax so bold,

That on a time he cast him to scold

And snebbe the good Oak, for he was old.

"'Why standst there (quoth he) thou brutish block?

Nor for fruit nor for shadow serves thy stock;

Seest how fresh my flowers be spread,

Dyed in lily white and crimson red,

With leaves engrained in lusty green;

Colours meet to clothe a maiden queen?

Thy waste bigness but cumbers the ground,

And dirks the beauty of my blossoms round:

The mouldy moss, which thee accloyeth,

My cinnamon smell too much annoyeth:

Wherefore soon I rede thee hence remove,

Lest thou the price of my displeasure prove.'

So spake this bold Brere with great disdain:

Little him answered the Oak again,

But yielded, with shame and grief adawed,

That of a weed he was overcrawed.

"It chanced after upon a day,

The husbandman self to come that way,

Of custom for to surview his ground,

And his trees of state in compass round:

Him when the spiteful Brere had espied,

Causeless complained, and loudly cried

Unto his lord, stirring up stern strife:

"'O my liege lord! the god of my life,

Pleaseth you ponder your suppliant's plaint,

Caused of wrong and cruel constraint,

Which I your poor vassal daily endure;

And, but your goodness the same recure,

Am like for desperate dool to die,

Through felonous force of mine enemy.'

"Greatly aghast with this piteous plea,

Him rested the goodman on the lea,

And bade the Brere in his plaint proceed.

With painted words then gan this proud weed

(As most usen ambitious folk)

His coloured crime with craft to cloak.

"'Ah, my sovereign! lord of creatures all,

Thou placer of plants both humble and tall,

Was not I planted of thine own hand,

To be the primrose of all thy land;

With flow'ring blossoms to furnish the prime,

And scarlet berries in summer time?

How falls it then that this faded Oak,

Whose body is sere, whose branches broke,

Whose naked arms stretch unto the fire,

Unto such tyranny doth aspire;

Hindering with his shade my lovely light,

And robbing me of the sweet sun's sight?

So beat his old boughs my tender side,

That oft the blood springeth from woundËs wide;

Untimely my flowers forced to fall,

That be the honour of your coronal:

And oft he lets his canker-worms light

Upon my branches, to work me more spite;

And oft his hoary locks down doth cast,

Wherewith my fresh flow'rets be defast:

For this, and many more such outrage,

Craving your goodlyhead to assuage

The rancorous rigour of his might;

Nought ask I, but only to hold my right;

Submitting me to your good sufferance,

And praying to be guarded from grievance.'

"To this this Oak cast him to reply

Well as he couth; but his enemy

Had kindled such coals of displeasure,

That the goodman nould stay his leisure,

But home him hasted with furious heat,

Increasing his wrath with many a threat:

His harmful hatchet he hent in hand,

(Alas! that it so ready should stand!)

And to the field alone he speedeth,

(Aye little help to harm there needeth!)

Anger nould let him speak to the tree,

Enaunter his rage might cooled be;

But to the root bent his sturdy stroke,

And made many wounds in the waste Oak.

The axe's edge did oft turn again,

As half unwilling to cut the grain;

Seemed, the senseless iron did fear,

Or to wrong holy eld did forbear;

For it had been an ancient tree,

Sacred with many a mystery,

And often cross'd with the priests' crew,

And often hallowed with holy-water dew:

But sike fancies weren foolery,

And broughten this Oak to this misery;

For nought might they quitten him from decay,

For fiercely the goodman at him did lay.

The block oft groaned under the blow,

And sighed to see his near overthrow.

In fine, the steel had pierced his pith,

Then down to the earth he fell forthwith.

His wondrous weight made the ground to quake,

Th' earth shrunk under him, and seemed to shake:—

There lieth the Oak, pitied of none!

"Now stands the Brere like a lord alone,

Puffed up with pride and vain pleasance;

But all this glee had no continuance:

For eftsoons winter gan to approach;

The blust'ring Boreas did encroach,

And beat upon the solitary Brere;

For now no succour was seen him near.

Now gan he repent his pride too late;

For, naked left and disconsolate,

The biting frost nipt his stalk dead,

The watry wet weighed down his head,

And heaped snow burden'd him so sore,

That now upright he can stand no more;

And, being down, is trod in the durt

Of cattle, and broused, and sorely hurt.

Such was th' end of this ambitious Brere,

For scorning eld—"

CUD. Now I pray thee, shepheard, tell it not forth:

Here is a long tale, and little worth.

So long have I listened to thy speech,

That graffed to the ground is my breech;

My heartblood is well nigh frorne I feel,

And my galage grown fast to my heel;

But little ease of thy lewd tale I tasted:

Hie thee home, shepheard, the day is nigh wasted.

THENOT'S EMBLEME.4
Iddio, perche É vecchio,
Fa suoi al suo essempio.

CUDDIE'S EMBLEME.4
Niuno vecchio
Spaventa Iddio.

thenot's emblem cuddie's emblem

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