Appendix.
405
(3.)
The
Ovvle,
By Michaell Drayton,
Esquire.
Noctuas Athenas.
Prudens
non
loquax.
1604.
To
The Worthy,
And my most esteemed Patron,
Sir VValter Aston,
Knight of the
Honourable Order of the Bath.[1]
For the shrill trumpet and sterne tragick sounds
Objects out-ragious and so full of feare:
Our pen late steep'd in English Barons wounds,
Sent war-like accents to your tune-full eare.
Our active Muse to gentler morals dight;
Her slight conceites in humbled tunes doth sing;
And with the bird (regardlesse of the light)
Slowely doth move her late high-mounting wing.
The wreathe is Iuye that ingirts our browes,
Where-in this night's-bird harboreth all the day;
- ↑ Sir W. Aston was made a knight of the Bath, soon after his coming of age, at the coronation of King James I. in 1603; on which occasion Drayton attended him as one of his squires.
