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  • Sonnet viii
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Sonnet viii

William Drummond of Hawthornden

My Lute, bee as thou wast when thou didst grow
With thy greene Mother in some shadie Grove,
When immelodious Windes but made thee move,
And Birds on thee their Ramage did bestow.
Sith that deare Voyce which did thy Sounds approve,
Which us’d in such harmonious Straines to flow,
Is reft from Earth to tune those Spheares above,
What art thou but a Harbenger of Woe?
Thy pleasing Notes be pleasing Notes no more,
But orphane Wailings to the fainting Eare,
Each Stoppe a Sigh, each Sound draws forth a Teare,
Be therefore silent as in Woods before,
Or if that any Hand to touch thee deigne,
Like widow’d Turtle, still her losse complaine.


William Drummond of Hawthornden

from William Drummond of Hawthornden: poems and prose / edited by Robert H. MacDonald (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1976)

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17th century poems despair melancholia music musical instruments scottish poems sonnets
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William Drummond of Hawthornden1585 - 1649

Accession to the lairdship of Hawthornden Castle at the age of twenty-four allowed William Drummond to devote himself to the collection and study of literature and the writing of poetry.
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