colours as he gather'd them,
Some green, some white, some red, on them infus'd,
These lov'd, these fear'd, they blush'd to be so us'd.
The peascod green, oft with no little toil
He'd seek for in the fattest, fertil'st soil
And rend it from the stalk to bring it to her,
And in her bosom for acceptance woo her.
No berry in the grove or forest grew
That fit for nourishment the kind bird knew,
Nor any powerful herb in open field
To serve her brood the teeming earth did yield,
But with his utmost industry he sought it,
And to the cave for chaste Marina brought it."

_The Shepherd's Pipe_, besides reproducing Occleve, is in parts reminiscent
of Chaucer, in parts of Spenser, but always characterised by the free and
unshackled movement which is Browne's great charm; and the same
characteristics appear in the few minor poems attributed to him. Browne has
been compared to Keats, who read and loved him, and there are certainly not
a few points of resemblance. Of Keats's higher or more restrained
excellences, such as appear in the finest passages of _St. Agnes' Eve_, and
_Hyperion_, in the _Ode to a Grecian Urn_, and such minor pieces as _In a
Drear-Nighted December_, Browne had nothing. But he, like Keats, had that
kind of love of Nature which is really the love of a lover; and he had,
like Keats, a wonderful gift of expression of his love.[57] Nor is he ever
prosaic, a praise which certainly cannot be accorded to some men of far
greater repute, and perhaps of occasionally higher gifts both in his own
time and others. The rarest notes of Apollo he has not, but he is never
driven, as the poet and friend of his, to whom we next come, was often
driven, to the words of Mercury. This special gift was not very common at
the time; and though that time produced better poets than Browne, it is
worth noting in him. He may never reach the highest poetry, but he is
always a poet.

[57] Something of the same love, but unluckily much less of the same gift,
occurs in the poems of a friend of Browne's once hardly known except by
some fair verses on Shakespere ("Renowned Spenser," etc.), but made fully
accessible by Mr. R. Warwick Bond in 1893. This was William Basse, a
retainer of the Wenman family near Thame, the author, probably or
certainly, of a quaint defence of retainership, _Sword and Buckler_ (1602),
and of other poems--_Pastoral Elegies_, _Urania_, _Polyhymnia_,
etc.--together with an e