To those full days which others' Muses give,
Yet I am sure I shall be heard and sung
Of most severest eld and kinder young
Beyond my days; and maugre Envy's strife,
Add to my name some hours beyond my life."

This is the amiable hope of one who lived an entirely amiable life in

"homely towns,
Sweetly environ'd with the daisied downs:"

and who is not the less to be beloved because at times his amiability
prevents him from attacking even our somnolence too fiercely. If the
casual reader but remember Browne as a poet who had the honor to
supply Keats with inspiration,[A] there will always be others, and
enough of them, to prize his ambling Muse for her own qualities.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] _Cf._ his lament for William Ferrar (brother of Nicholas Ferrar,
of Little Gidding), drowned at sea--

"Glide soft, ye silver floods,
And every spring:
Within the shady woods
Let no bird sing...."