dots-menu
×

Home  »  English Poetry I  »  146. A Passion of my Lord of Essex

English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex

146. A Passion of my Lord of Essex

HAPPY were he could finish forth his fate

In some unhaunted desert, where, obscure

From all society, from love and hate

Of worldly folk; then might he sleep secure;

Then wake again, and ever give God praise,

Content with hip, with haws, and bramble-berry;

In contemplation passing all his days,

And change of holy thoughts to make him merry;

Who, when he dies, his tomb might be a bush,

Where harmless Robin dwells with gentle thrush.

—Happy were he!