tale;
The courage quails as strength decays and goes....

The thatcher hath a cottage poor you see:
The shepherd knows where he shall sleep at night;
The daily drudge from cares can quiet be:
Thus fortune sends some rest to every wight;
And I was born to house and land by right....

Well, ere my breath my body do forsake
My spirit I bequeath to God above;
My books, my scrawls, and songs that I did make,
I leave with friends that freely did me love....

Now, friends, shake hands, I must be gone, my boys!
Our mirth takes end, our triumph all is done;
Our tickling talk, our sports and merry toys
Do glide away like shadow of the sun.
Another comes when I my race have run,
Shall pass the time with you in better plight,
And find good cause of greater things to write.

Yet Churchyard was no contemptible bard; he composed a national poem,
"The Worthiness of Wales," which has been reprinted, and will be still
dear to his "Fatherland," as the Hollanders expressively denote their
natal spot. He wrote in the "Mirrour of Magistrates," the Life of
Wolsey, which has parts of great dignity; and the Life of Jane Shore,
which was much noticed in his day, for a severe critic of the times
writes:

Hath not Shore's wife, although a light-skirt she,
Given him a chaste, long, lasting memorie?

Churchyard, and the miseries of his poetical life, are alluded to by
Spenser. He is old Palemon in "Colin Clout's come Home again." Spenser
is supposed to describe this laborious writer for half a century,
whose melancholy pipe, in his old age, may make the reader "rew:"

Yet he himself may rewed be more right,
That sung so long untill quite hoarse he grew.

His epitaph, preserved by Camden, is extremely instructive to all
poets, could epitaphs instruct them:--

_Poverty_ and _poetry_ his tomb doth inclose;
Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in _prose_.

It appears also by a confession of Tom Nash, that an author would
then, pressed by the _res angusta domi_, when "the bottom of his purse
was turned upward," submit to compose pieces for gentlemen who aspired
to authorship. He tells us on some occasion, that he was then in the
country composing poetry for some country squire;--and says, "I am
faine to let my plow stand still in the midst of a furrow, to follow
these Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous _villanellas_[21] I
prostitute my pen," and this, too, "twice or thrice in a month;" and