In his ‘Shepherd’s Pipe,’ a series of ‘Eclogues’ Browne follows this plan; but ‘Britannia’s Pastorals’ contains rambling stories of Hamadryads and Oreads; figures which are too shadowy to seem real, yet stand in exquisite woodland landscapes.  When the story passes to the yellow sands and “froth-girt rocks,” washed by the crisped and curling waves from “Neptune’s silver, ever-shaking breast,” or when it touches the mysteries of the ocean world, over which “Thetis drives her silver throne,” the poet’s fancy is as delicate as when he revels in the earthy smell of the woods, where the leaves, golden and green, hide from sight the feathered choir; where glow the hips of scarlet berries; where is heard the dropping of nuts; and where the active bright-eyed squirrels leap from tree to tree.

The loves, hardships, and adventures of Marina, Celadyne, Redmond, Fida, Philocel, Aletheia, Metanoia, and Amintas do not hold the reader from delight in descriptions of the blackbird and dove calling from the dewy branches; crystal streams lisping through banks purple with violets, rosy with eglantine, or sweet with wild thyme; thickets where the rabbits hide; sequestered nooks on which the elms and alders throw long shadows; circles of green grass made by dancing elves; rounded hills shut in by oaks, pines, birches, and laurel, where shepherds pipe on oaten straws, or shag-haired satyrs frolic and sleep; and meadows, whose carpets of cowslip and mint are freshened daily by nymphs pouring out gentle streams from crystal urns.  Every now and then, huntsmen in green dash through his sombre woods with their hounds in full cry; anglers are seated by still pools, shepherds dance around the May-pole, and shepherdesses gather flowers for garlands.  Gloomy caves appear, surrounded by hawthorn and holly that “outdares cold winter’s ire,” and sheltering old hermits, skilled in simples and the secret power of herbs.  Sometimes the poet describes a choir where the tiny wren sings the treble, Robin Redbreast the mean, the thrush the tenor, and the nightingale the counter-tenor, while droning bees fill in the bass; and shows us fairy haunts and customs with a delicacy only equaled by Drayton and Herrick.

Several lyric songs of high order are scattered through the ‘Pastorals,’ and the famous ‘Palinode on Man’ is imbedded in the Third Book as follows:—­

     “I truly know
     How men are born and whither they shall go;
     I know that like to silkworms of one year,
     Or like a kind and wronged lover’s tear,
     Or on the pathless waves a rudder’s dint,
     Or like the little sparkles of a flint,
     Or like to thin round cakes with cost perfum’d,
     Or fireworks only made to be consum’d: 
     I know that such is man, and all that trust
     In that weak piece of animated dust. 
     The silkworm droops, the lover’s tears soon shed,
     The ship’s way quickly lost, the sparkle dead;
     The cake burns out in haste, the firework’s done,
     And man as soon as these as quickly gone.”