To His Lute
by William Drummond

Scottish poet. The main collections of his verse are Poems, Amorous, Funereal, Divine, Pastoral, in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals (1616), The Muses Welcome (1618), and Flowers of Sion (1623), which includes the religious sonnets 'For the Magdalene' and 'Saint John Baptist'. He spent many years writing a History of Scotland 1423-1524, and another notable prose work is A Cypress Grove (1623), a meditation on death. His notes on Ben Jonson's conversation were published in 1832.

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To His Lute
by William Drummond

My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady grove,
When immelodious winds but made thee move,
And birds their ramage did on thee bestow.
Since that dear Voice which did thy sounds approve,
Which wont in such harmonious strains to flow,
Is reft from Earth to tune those spheres above,
What art thou but a harbinger of woe?
Thy pleasing notes be pleasing notes no more,
But orphans' wailings to the fainting ear;
Each stroke a sigh, each sound draws forth a tear;
For which be silent as in woods before:
Or if that any hand to touch thee deign,
Like widowed turtle, still her loss complain.

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To His Lute by William Drummond