Hark how the mower Damon sung,
With love of Juliana stung!
While everything did seem to paint
The scene more fit for his complaint.
Like her fair eyes the day was fair,
But scorching like his amorous care;
Sharp, like his scythe, his sorrow was,
And withered, like his hopes, the grass.
"Oh what unusual heats are here,
Which thus our sunburned meadows sear!
The grasshopper its pipe gives o'er,
And hamstringed frogs can dance no more:
But in the brook the green frog wades,
And grasshoppers seek out the shades.
Only the snake, that kept within,
Now glitters in its second skin.
"This heat the sun could never raise,
Nor dog star so inflame the days;
It from an higher beauty grow'th,
Which burns the fields and mower both;
Which mads the dog, and makes the sun
Hotter than his own Phaëton.
Not July causeth these extremes,
But Juliana's scorching beams.
"Tell me where I may pass the fires
Of the hot day or hot desires,
To what cool cave shall I descend,
Or to what gelid fountain bend?
Alas! I look for ease in vain,
When remedies themselves complain:
No moisture but my tears do rest,
No cold but in her icy breast.
"How long wilt thou, fair shepherdess,
Esteem me and my presents less?
To thee the harmless snake I bring,
Disarméd of its teeth and sting;
To thee chameleons, changing hue,
And oak leaves tipped with honeydew;
Yet thou, ungrateful, hast not sought
Nor what they are, nor who them brought.
"I am the mower Damon, known
Through all the meadows I have mown.
On me the morn her dew distills
Before her darling daffodils,
And if at noon my toil me heat,
The sun himself licks off my sweat;
While, going home, the evening sweet
In cowslip-water bathes my feet.
"What though the piping shepherd stock
The plains with an unnumbered flock?
This scythe of mine discovers wide
More ground than all his sheep do hide.
With this the golden fleece I shear
Of all these closes every year,
And though in wool more poor than they,
Yet I am richer far in hay.
"Nor am I so deformed to sight
If in my scythe I lookéd right;
In which I see my picture done
As in a crescent moon the sun.
The deathless fairies take me oft
To lead them in their dances soft,
And when I tune myself to sing,
About me they contract their ring.
"How happy might I still have mowed,
Had not Love here his thistles sowed!
But now I all the day complain,
Joining my labor to my pain;
And with my scythe cut down the grass,
Yet still my grief is where it was;
But when the iron blunter grows,
Sighing, I whet my scythe and woes."
While thus he threw his elbow round,
Depopulating all the ground,
And with his whistling scythe does cut
Each stroke between the earth and root,
The edgéd steel, by careless chance,
Did into his own ankle glance,
And there among the grass fell down
By his own scythe the mower mown.
"Alas!" said he, "these hurts are slight
To those that die by Love's despite.
With shepherd's purse and clown's all-heal
The blood I stanch and wound I seal.
Only for him no cure is found
Whom Juliana's eyes do wound.
'Tis Death alone that this must do;
For, Death, thou art a mower too."