William Basse

William Basse (c. 1583–c. 1653) was an English poet and a follower of Edmund Spenser, author of Three Pastoral Elegies (1602) and of Great Britain's Sunset (1613), an elegy on Prince Henry.

He is remembered above all for his short elegy on Shakespeare, first printed in 1633, and for the Angler's Song that Izaak Walton printed in The Compleat Angler (1653). The texts here follow R. W. Bond's edition of his Poetical Works (1893).