Page [unnumbered]
The complaint of Elstred.
THE silent shadowes with their mothers vaile,
The brighter lampe of Heauen from Thetis hid:
Apolloes sister in her starrie raile,
Along her lower spheare in tryumph rid,
When I by Seuerus beauteous banckes alone,
Encountred with this wofull vision.
A dolefull Queene in semblance and array,
Attended by a princely looking lasse:
Amidst the waltring waue inforc't her way,
And landed there where I lamenting was:
Both seemd of royall birth, and well begotten,
Altho their weedes through eld and wette were rotten.
The leaues in Autumne fall not downe so fast,
As liquid christall dropped from their eyes:
But vvhen their stormie teares were ouer-past,
(The silent spoks-men of their miseries)
They sate them downe where I amaz'd remained,
And thus their falls successiuely complained.
Amidst the troopes of those vvhom tyrant Fate
Hath ledde in tr••umph
to their time-lesse graue:
Let vvof••ll
Elstred vveepe her wretched state,
Whose storie merrits some regard to haue.
VVho once inthron'd, and now to fortune thrall,
May teach successions to auoyde my fall.