William Browne was an English pastoral poet, born at Tavistock, Devon, and educated at Exeter College, Oxford; subsequently he entered the Inner Temple.
His chief works were the long poem Britannia's Pastorals , and a contribution to The Shepheard's Pipe . Britannia's Pastorals was never finished: in his lifetime Books I & II were published successively in 1613 and 1616. The manuscript of Book III was not published until 1852. The poem is concerned with the loves and woes of Celia, Marina, etc.
To him is due the epitaph for the dowager Countess of Pembroke . Wikipedia
“Whose life is a bubble, and in length a span.”
Book i. Song 2. Compare: "Who then to frail mortality shall trust/ But limns on water, or but writes in dust", Francis Bacon, The World.
Britannia's Pastorals (1613)
