POEMS: written BY WIL. Shakespeare. Gent.  
Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by John Benson, dwelling in St. Dunstan's churchyard. 1640.   

To the Reader.  
I Here presume (under favour) to present to your view, some excellent and sweetly composed Poems, of Master William Shakespeare, Which in themselves appear of the same purity, the author himself then living avouched; they had not the fortune by reason of their infancy in his death, to have the due accommodation of proportionable glory, with the rest of his everliving works, yet the lines of themselves will afford you a more authentic approbation than my assurance any way can, to invite your allowance, in your perusal you shall find them Seren, clear and eligantly plain, such gentle strains as shall recreate and not perplex your brain, no intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect, but perfect eloquence; such as will raise your admiration to his praise: this assurance I know will not differ from your acknowledgement. And certain I am, my opinion will be seconded by the sufficiency of these ensuing Lines; I have been somewhat solicitus to bring this forth to the perfect view of all men; and in so doing, glad to be serviceable for the continuance of glory to the deserved Author in these his Poems.  
I. B.   

Upon Master WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, the Deceased author, and his POEMS.  

POets are borne not made, when I would prove  
This truth, the glad remembrance I must love  
Of never dying Shakespeare, who alone,  
Is argument enough to make that one.  
First, that he was a Poet none would doubt,  
That heard th'applause of what he sees set out  
Imprinted; where thou hast (I will not say)  
Reader his works for to contrive a Play:  
To him 'twas none) the pattern of all wit,  
Art without Art unparalleled as yet.  
Next Nature only helped him, for look thorough  
This whole book, thou shalt find he doth not borrow,  
One phrase from greeks, nor latins imitate,  
Nor once from vulgar Languages Translate,  
Nor Plagiari-like from others glean,  
Nor begs he from each witty friend a Scene  
To piece his Acts with, all that he doth write,  
Is pure his own, plot, language exquisite,  
But oh! what praise more powerful can we give  
The dead, then that by him the King's men live,  
His Players, which should they but have shared the Fate,  
All else expired within the short term's date;  
How could the Globe have prospered, since through want  
Of change, the plays and Poems had grown scant.  
But happy Verse thou shalt be sung and heard,  
When hungry quills shall be such honour bard.  
Then vanish upstart Writers to each Stage,  
You needy Poetasters of this Age,  
Where Shakespeare lived or spoke, vermin forbear,  
lest with your froth you spot them, come not near;  
But if you needs must write, if poverty  
So pinch, that otherwise you starve and die,  
On God's name may the Bull or Cockpit have  
Your lame blank Verse, to keep you from the grave:  
Or let new Fortunes younger brethren see,  
What they can pick from your lean industry.  
I do not wonder when you offer at  
Blackfriars, that you suffer: 'tis the fate  
Of richer veins, prime judgements that have fared  
The worse, with this deceased man compared.  
So have I seen, when Cesar would appear,  
And on the Stage at half-sword parley were,  
Brutus and Cassius: oh how the Audience,  
Were ravished, with what wonder they went thence,  
When some new day they would not brook a line,  
Of tedious (though well laboured) Catiline's;  
Sejanus too was irksome, they priz'de more  
Honest Jago, or the jealous Moor.  
And though the Fox and subtle alchemist,  
Long intermitted could not quite be missed,  
Though these have shamed all the Ancients, and might raise,  
Their authors merit with a crown of bays.  
Yet these sometimes, even at a friends desire  
Acted, have scarce defraied the sea-coal fire  
And doorkeepers: when let but Falstaff come,  
Hall, Peines, the rest you scarce shall have a room  
All is so pestered: let but Beatrice  
And Benedick be seen, lo in a trice  
The Cockpit Galleries, Boxes, all are full  
To hear Maluoglio that cross gartered Gull.  
Brief, there is nothing in his wit fraught book,  
Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look  
Like old coined gold, whose lines in every page,  
Shall pass true currant to succeeding age.  
But why do I dead Sheakspeares' praise recite,  
Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write;  
For me 'tis needless, since an host of men,  
Will pay to clap his praise, to free my Pen.   
Leon. Digges.   

Of Mr. William Shakespeare.  

WHat, lofty Shakespeare, art again revived?  
And Virbius like now showest thyself twice lived,  
'tis love that thus to thee is shown,  
The labours his, the glory sti'l thine own.  
These learned Poems amongst thine afterbirth,  
That makes thy name immortal on the earth,  
Will make the learned still admire to see,  
The muse's gifts so fully infused on thee.  
Let Carping Momus bark and bite his fill,  
And ignorant Davus slight thy learned skill:  
Yet those who know the worth of thy desert,  
And with true judgement can discern thy Art,  
Will be admirers of thy high tuned strain,  
Amongst whose number let me still remain.   
John Warren.   

POEMS: written BY WIL. Shakespeare. Gent.  
Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by John Benson, dwelling in St. Dunstan's churchyard.   

POEMS  BY WILL. SHAKESPEARE Gent. 

The glory of beauty.  

AH wherefore with infection should he live,  
And with his presence grace impiety,  
That sin by him advantage should achieve,  
And lace itself with his society?  
Why should false painting imitate his cheek,  
And steal dead seeing of his living hew?  
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek,  
Roses of shadow, since his Rose is true?  
Why should he live, now nature bankrupt is,  
Beggared of blood to blush through lively veins,  
For she hath no exchecker now but his,  
And proud of many, lives upon his gains?  
O him she stores, to show what wealth she had,  
In dares long since, before these last so bad.  
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn,  
When beauty lived and dy'd as flowers do now,  
Before these bastard signs of fair were borne,  
Or durst inhabit on a living brow:  
Before the golden tresses of the dead,  
The right of sepulchers were shorn away,  
To live a second life on second head,  
Ere beauties dead fleece made another gay:  
In him those holy antique hours are seen,  
Without all ornament, itself and true,  
Making no summer of an others green,  
Robbing no old to dress his beauty new,  
And him as for a map doth Nature store,  
To show false Art what beauty was of yore,  
Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view,  
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:  
All tongues (the voice of souls) give thee that end,  
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes Commend.  
Their outward thus with outward praise is crowned,  
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own,  
In other accents do this praise confound  
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.  
They look into the beauty of thy mind,  
And that in guess they measure by thy deeds,  
Then churls their thoughts (although their eyes were kind)  
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds,  
But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,  
The soil is this, that thou dost common grow.    

Injurious Time.  

LIke as the waves make towards the pibled shore,  
So do our minutes hasten to their end,  
Each changing place with that which goes before,  
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.  
Nativity once in the main of light.  
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,  
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,  
And time that gave, doth now his gift confound,  
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,  
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,  
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,  
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow,  
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand  
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.  
Against my love shall be as I am now  
With times injurious hand chrusht and o'erworn,  
When hours have dreind his blood and filled his brow  
With lines and wrinkles, when his youthful morn  
Hath travailed on to Ages steepy night,  
And all those beauties whereof now he's King  
Are vanishing, or vanished out of sight,  
Stealing away the treasure of his Spring.  
For such a time do I now fortify  
Against confounding Ages cruel knife,  
That he shall never cut from memory  
My sweet love's beauty, though my lover's life.  
His beauty shall in these black lines be seen,  
And they shall live, and he in them still green.  
When I have seen by times fell hand defaced  
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,  
When sometime lofty towers I see down rased,  
And brasle eternal slave to mortal rage.  
When I have seen the hungry Ocean gain  
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,  
And the firm soil win of the watery maine,  
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store,  
When I have seen such interchange of state,  
Or state itself confounded, to decay,  
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate  
That time will come and take my love away.  
This thought is as a death which cannot choose  
But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.  
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,  
But sad mortality ore-swaies their power,  
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,  
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?  
O how shall summer's hungry breath hold out,  
Against the wrackful siege of battering days,  
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,  
Nor gates of steel so strong but time decays?  
O fearful meditation, where alack  
Shall times best jewel from times chest lie hid?  
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back,  
Or who his spoil or beauty can forbid?  
O none, unless this miracle have might,  
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.  
Tired with all these for restful death I cry,  
As to behold desert a beggar borne,  
And needy Nothing trimmed in jollity,  
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,  
And gilded honour shamefully misplast,  
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,  
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,  
And strength by limping sway disabled,  
And Art made tongue-tied by authority,  
And Folly (Doctor-like) controlling skill,  
And simple-Truth miscalde simplicity,  
And captive-good attending captain ill.  
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,  
Save that to die, I leave my love alone.    

True Admiration.  

WHat is your substance, whereof are you made,  
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?  
Since every one, hath every one, one shade,  
And you but one, can every shadow lend:  
Describe Adonis and the counterfeit,  
Is poorly imitated after you,  
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,  
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:  
Speak of the spring, and foyzen of the year,  
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,  
The other as your bounty doth appear,  
And you in every blessed shape we know.  
In all external grace you have some part,  
But you like none, none you for constant heart.  
O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem,  
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give,  
The Rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem  
For that sweet odour, which doth in it live:  
The Canker-bloomes have full as deep a dye,  
As the perfumed tincture of the Roses,  
Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly,  
When summers breathe their masked buds discloses:  
But for their virtue only in their show,  
They live unmooved, and unrespected fade,  
Die to themselves. Sweet Roses do not so,  
Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:  
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,  
When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth.    

The source of love.  

BEing your slave what should I do but tend,  
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?  
I have no precious time at all to spend,  
Nor services to do till you require.  
Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,  
Whilst I (my sovereign) watch the clock for you,  
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,  
When you have bid your servant once adieu.  
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought,  
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,  
But like a sad slave stay and think of nought  
Save where you are, how happy you make those.  
So true a fool is love, that in your Will,  
(Though you do any thing) he thinks no ill.  
That God for bid, that made me first your slave,  
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,  
Or at your hand th'account of hours to crave,  
Being your vassa●le bound to stay your leisure.  
Oh let me suffer (being at your beck)  
Th'imprisoned absence of your liberty,  
And patience tame, to sufferance bide each check,  
Without accusing you of injury.  
Be where you list, your charter is so strong,  
That you yourself may privilege your time  
To what you will, to you it doth belong,  
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.  
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell,  
Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.    

The beauty of Nature.  

IF there be nothing new, but that which is,  
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,  
Which labouring for invention bear amiss  
The second burden of a former child?  
O that record could with a backward look,  
Even of five hundreth courses of the sun,  
Show me your image in some antique book,  
Since mine at first in character was done.  
That I might see what the old world could say,  
To this composed wonder of your frame,  
Whether we are mended, or where better they,  
Or whether revolution be the same.  
Oh sure I am the wits of former days,  
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.    

love's cruelty.  

FRom fairest creatures we desire increase,  
That thereby beauty's Rose might never die,  
But as the riper should by time decease,  
His tender heir might bear his memory:  
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,  
Feedest thy lights flame with self substantial fuel,  
Making a famine where abundance lies,  
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:  
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament,  
And only herald to the gaudy spring,  
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,  
And tender chorle mak'st wast in niggarding:  
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,  
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.  
When forty Winters shall beseige thy brow,  
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,  
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,  
Will be a tottered weed of small worth held:  
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,  
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;  
To say within thine own deep sunken eyes,  
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.  
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use,  
If thou couldst answer this fair child of mine  
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse.  
Proving his beauty by succession thine.  
This were to be new made when thou art old,  
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.  
Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,  
Now is the time that face should form an other,  
Whose fresh repaine if now thou not renewest,  
Thou dost beguile the world, unblesse some mother.  
For where is she so fair whose uneared womb  
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?  
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,  
Of his self love to stop posterity?  
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee  
Calls back the lovely April of her prime,  
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,  
Despite of wrinkles this thy goulded time.  
But if thou live remember not to be,  
Die single and thine Image dies with thee.    

Youthful glory.  

O That you were yourself, but love you are  
No longer yours, than you yourself here live,  
Against this coming end you should prepare,  
And your sweet semblance to some other give.  
So should that beauty which you hold in lease  
Find no determination, than you were  
Yourself again after yourselves decease,  
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.  
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,  
Which husbandry in honour might uphold,  
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day  
And barren rage of deaths eternal cold?  
O none but unthrifts, dare my love you know,  
You had a Father, let your Son say so.  
Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,  
And yet me thinks I have Astronomy,  
But not to tell of good, or evil luck,  
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons quality,  
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell;  
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,  
Or say with Princes if it shall go well  
By oft predict that I in heaven find.  
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,  
And constant stars in them I read such art  
As truth and beauty shall together thrive  
If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert:  
Or else of thee this I prognosticate,  
Thy end is Truths and beauty's doom and date.  
When I consider every thing that grows  
Holds in perfection but a little moment.  
That this huge stage presenteth nought but showe●  
Whereon the Stars in secret influence comment.  
When I perceive that men as plants increase,  
Cheated and checked even by the selfsame sky:  
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,  
And were their brave state out of memory.  
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay,  
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight.  
Where wa●tfull time debateth with decay  
To change your day of youth to sullied night,  
And all in war with Time for love of you  
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.    

Good Admonition.  

Vt wherefore do not you a mightier way  
Make war upon this bloody tyrant time?  
And fortify yourself in your decay  
With means more blessed than my barren time?  
Now stand you on the top of happy hours,  
And many maiden gardens yet unset,  
With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers,  
Much liker than your painted counterfeit:  
So should the lines of life that life repair  
Which this (Times pencil or my pupil pen)  
Neither in inward worth nor outward fair  
Can make you live yourself in eyes of men,  
To give away yourself, keeps yourself still,  
And you must live drawn by your own sweet skill.  
Who will believe my verse in time to come  
If it were filled with your most high deserts?  
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb  
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:  
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,  
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,  
The age to come would say this Poet lies,  
Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces.  
So should my papers (yellowed with their age)  
Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue,  
And your true rights be termed a poet's rage,  
And stretched mitre of an Antique song.  
But were some child of yours alive that time  
You should live twice in it, and in my rhyme.    

Quick prevention.  

Lo in the Orient when the gracious light,  
Lifts up his burning head each under eye  
Doth homage to his new appearing sight,  
Serving with looks his sacred majesty,  
And having climbed the steep up heavenly hill,  
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,  
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,  
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:  
But when from high-most pitch with weary care,  
Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,  
The eyes (fore duteous) now converted are  
From his low tract and look another way:  
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon:  
Vnloked on diest unless thou get a son.    

Magazine of beauty.  

Unthrifty loveliness why dost thou spend,  
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy?  
Nature's bequest gives nothing but doth lend,  
And being frank she lends to those are free:  
Then beauteous niggard why dost thou abuse,  
The bounteous larges●e given thee to give?  
Profitless usurer, why dost thou use  
So great a sum of sums yet canest not live?  
For having traffic with thyself alone,  
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive,  
Then how when nature calls thee to be gone,  
What acceptable Audit canst thou leave?  
Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,  
Which used lives th'executor to be.  
Those hours that with gentle work did frame,  
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell  
Will play the tyrants to the very same,  
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:  
For never resting time leads Summer on,  
To hideous winter and confounds him there,  
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone.  
Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere,  
Then were not summer's distillation left  
A liquid prisoner penned in walls of glass,  
Beauty's effect with beauty were bere●t,  
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was.  
But flowers distiled though they with winter meet,  
Lose but their show, their substance still lives sweet.  
Then let not winters wragged hand deface,  
In thee thy summer ere thou be distiled:  
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place,  
With beauty's treasure ere it be self killed:  
That use is not forbidden usury,  
Which happies those that pay the willing lone;  
That's for thyself to breed another thee,  
Or ten times happier be it ten for one,  
Ten times thyself were happier than thou art,  
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee,  
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,  
Leaving thee living in posterity?  
Be not selfe-wild for thou art much too fair,  
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.    

An invitation to Marriage.  

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly,  
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:  
Why lov'st thou that which thou receaust not gladly,  
Or else receivest with pleasure thine annoy?  
If the true concord of well tuned sounds,  
By unions married do offend thine ear,  
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds  
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear:  
Mark how one string sweet husband to another,  
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;  
Resembling sire, and child, and happy mother,  
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:  
Whose speechless song being many, seeming one,  
Sings this to thee thou single wilt prove none.  
It is for fear to wet a widow's eye  
That thou consum'st thyself in single life?  
Ah! if thou issule●●e shalt hap to die,  
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife,  
The world will be thy widow and still weep,  
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,  
When every private widow well may keep,  
By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind:  
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend  
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it  
But beauty's waste hath in the world an end,  
And kept unused the user so destroys it:  
No love toward others in that bosom sits  
That on himself such murderous shame commits.  
For shame d●●y that thou bear'st love to any  
Who for thyself art so unprovident  
Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,  
But that thou none lov'st is most evident:  
For thou art so possessed with murderous hate,  
That 'gainst thyself thou stickst not to conspire,  
Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate  
Which to repair should be thy chief desire:  
O change thy thought, that I may change my mind,  
Shall hate be fairer loged then gentle love?  
Be as thy presence is gracious and kind,  
Or to thyself at least kind hearted prove,  
Make thee another self for love of me,  
That beauty still may live in thine or thee.  
As fast as thou shalt wane so fast thou growest,  
In one of thine, from that which thou departest,  
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest,  
Thou Mayst call thine, when thou from youth convertest,  
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase,  
Without this folly, age, and cold decay,  
If all were minded so, the times should cease,  
And threescore years would make the world away:  
Let those who● nature hath not made for store,  
Harsh, featurelesse, and rude, barrenly perish,  
Look whom she best endowed, she gave the more;  
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish,  
She carved thee for her se●le, and meant thereby,  
Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die.  
When I do count the clock that tells the time,  
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night,  
When I behold the violet past prime,  
And sable curls or silvered o'er with white:  
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,  
Which erst from heat did canopi● the herd  
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves  
Borne on the bear with white and bristly beard:  
Then of thy beauty do I question make  
That thou among the wastes of time must go,  
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,  
And die as fast as they see others grow,  
And nothing 'gainst Times scythe can make defence  
Save bread to brave him, when he takes thee hence.    

False belief.  

WHen my Love swears that she is made of truth,  
I do believe her (though I know she lies)  
That she might think me some untutored youth,  
Unskilful in the world's false forgeries.  
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young.  
Although I know my years be past the best:  
I smiling, credit her false speaking tongue,  
Outfacing faults in Love, with loves ill rest.  
But wherefore says my love that she is young?  
And wherefore say not I, that I am old?  
O, Loves best habit is a soothing tongue,  
And Age (in love) loves not to have years told.  
Therefore I'll lie with Love, and Love with me,  
Since that our faults in Love thus smothered be.    

A Temptation.  

TWo loves I have, of Comfort, and despair,  
That like two Spirits do suggest me still:  
My better angel is a Man (right fair)  
My worser spirit a Woman (Coloured ill.)  
To win me soon to hell, my Female evil  
Tempteth my better angel from my side,  
And would corrupt my Saint to be a devil,  
Wooing his purity, with her fair pride.  
And whether that my angel be turned fiend,  
Suspect I may (yet not directly tell:)  
For being both to me: both to each friend,  
I guess one angel in another's hell.  
The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt,  
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.    

Fast and loose.  

DId not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,  
'Gainst whom the world could not hold argument,  
Persuade my heart to this false perjury:  
Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment,  
A woman I forswore: but I will prove  
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:  
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love,  
Thy grace being gained, cures all disgrace in me.  
My vow was breath, and breathe a vapour is,  
Than thou fair Sun, that on this earth doth shine,  
Exhale this vapour vow, in thee it is:  
If broken, th●n it is no fault of mine.  
If by me broke what fool is not so wise  
To break an Oath, to win a Paradise?    

True content.  

SO is it not with me as with that Muse,  
stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,  
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use,  
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,  
Making a cooplement of proud compare  
With sun and moon, with earth and seas rich gems:  
With April's first borne flowers and all things rare,  
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems,  
O let me true in love but truly write,  
And then believe me, my love is as fair,  
As any mother's child, though not so bright  
As those gold candles fixed in heavens aye●:  
Let them say more that like of hearsay well,  
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.    

A bashful Lover.  

AS an unperfect actor on the stage,  
Who with his fear is put besides his part,  
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,  
Whose strengths abnndance, weakens his own heart;  
So I for fear of trust, forget to say,  
The perfect ceremony of loves right,  
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,  
O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might,  
O let my books be then the eloquence,  
And dumb presages of my speaking breast,  
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,  
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.  
O learn to read what silent love hath writ,  
To hear with eyes belongs to loves fine wit.    

Strong conceit.  

MY glass shall not persuade me I am old,  
So long as youth and thou art of one date,  
But when in thee times sorrows I behold,  
Then look I death my days should expiate.  
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,  
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,  
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me,  
How can I then be elder than thou art?  
O therefore love be of thyself so wary,  
As I not for myself, but for thee will,  
Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary  
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill,  
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,  
Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.    

A sweet provocation.  

SWeet Cytheria, sitting by a brook,  
With young Adonis, lovely, fresh and green,  
Did court the Lad with many a lovely look,  
Such looks as none could look but beauty's Queen.  
She told him stories, to delight his ears:  
She showed him favours, to allure his eye:  
To win his heart, she touched him here and there,  
Touches so soft, still conquer chastity.  
But whether unripe years did want conceit,  
Or he refused to take her figured proffer,  
The tender nibler would not touch the bait,  
But smile, and jest, at every gentle offer:  
Then fell she on her back, fair Queen, and toward  
He rose and ran away, ah fool too froward.    

A constant vow.  

IF love make me forsworn how shall I swear to love?  
O, never faithcould hold, if not to beauty vowed:  
Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll constant prove,  
Those thoughts to me like Okes, to thee like osiers bowed,  
Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes,  
Where all those pleasures lives, that Art can comprehend:  
If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice:  
Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend,  
All ignorant that soul, that sees thee without wonder,  
Which is to me some praise, that I thy parts admire:  
Thine eye Jove's lightning seems, thy voice his dreadful thunder  
Which (not to anger bent) is music and sweet fire.  
Celestial as thou art, O, do not love that wrong:  
To sing heavens praise, with such an earthly tongue.    

The Exchange.  

A woman's face with natures own hand painted,  
Hast thou the Master Mistress of my passion,  
A woman's gentle heart but not acquainted  
With shifting change as is false womens' fashion,  
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling:  
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth,  
A man in hew all Hews in his controlling,  
Which steals men's eyes, and womens' souls amazeth:  
And for a woman went thou first created,  
Till nature as she wrought thee fell a-doting,  
And by addition me of thee defeated,  
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.  
But since she pricked thee out for womens' pleasure,  
Mine be thy love and thy loves use their treasure.    

A disconsolation.  

WEary with toil, I haste me to my bed,  
The dear repose for limbs with travail tired,  
But than begins a journey in my head  
To work my mind, when bodies work's expired.  
For than my thoughts (from far where I abide)  
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,  
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,  
Looking on darkness which the blind do see.  
Save that my souls imaginary sight  
Presents their shadow to my sightless view,  
Which like a jewel (hunge in ghastly night)  
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.  
Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,  
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.  
How can I then return in happy plight  
That am debarred the benefit of rest?  
When days oppression is not eazd by night,  
But day by night and night by day oppressed.  
And each (though enemies to others reign)  
Do in consent shake hands to torture me,  
The one by toil, the other to complain  
How far I toil, still farther off from thee.  
I tell the Day to please him thou art bright,  
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven:  
So flatter I the swart complexioned night,  
When sparkling stars twire, not thou guil'st th'even.  
But day doth daily draw my sorrows longer,  
And night doth nightly make griefs length seem stronger.  
When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,  
I all alone be weep my out-cast state,  
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,  
And look upon myself and curse my fate.  
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,  
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,  
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,  
With what I most enjoy contented least,  
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,  
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,  
(Like to the lark at break of day arising)  
From sullen earth sings himns at Heavensgate,  
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,  
That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.    

Cruel Deceit.  

Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn,  
And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade:  
When Cytherea (all in love forlorn)  
A longing tarriance for Adonis made  
Under an Osyer growing by a brook,  
A brook, where Adon used to cool his spleen:  
Hot was the day, she hotter that did look  
For his approach, that often there had been.  
Anon he comes, and throws his Mantle by,  
And stood stark naked on the brooks green brim:  
The sun looked on the world with glorious eye,  
Yet not so wistly, as this Queen on him:  
He spying her, bounced in (whereas he stood)  
Oh Jove (quoth she) why was not I a flood?    

The unconstant Lover.  

Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle,  
Mild as a Dove, but neither true nor trusty,  
Brighter than glass, and yet as glass is brittle,  
Softer than wax, and yet as Iron rusty;  
A lily pale, with damask die to grace her,  
None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.   

Her lips to mine how often hath she joined,  
Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing:  
How many tales to please me hath she coined,  
Dreading my love, the loss thereof still fearing.  
Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings,  
Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings.   

She burned with love, as straw with fire flameth,  
She burned out love, as soon as straw out burneth;  
She framed the love, and yet she foiled the framing,  
She bad love last, and yet she fell a turning.  
Was this a lover, or a lecher whether?  
Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.    

The benefit of Friendship.  

WHen to the Sessions of sweet silent thought,  
I summon up remembrance of things past,  
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,  
And with old woes new wail my dear times waste:  
Then can I drown an eye (Unused to flow)  
For precious friends hid in deaths dateless night,  
And weep a fresh loves long since cancelled woe,  
And moan th'expense of many a vanished sight.  
Then can I grieve at grievances fore gone,  
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er  
The sad account of fore-bemoned moan,  
Which I new pay, as if not paid before.  
But if the while I think on thee (Dear friend)  
All losses are restored, and sorrow's end.  
Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,  
Which I by lacking have supposed dead,  
And there reigns Love and all love's loving parts,  
And all those friends which I thought buried.  
How many a holy and obsequious tear  
Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye,  
As interest of the dead, which now appear,  
But things removed that hidden in there lie.  
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live.  
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone,  
Who all their parts of me to thee did give,  
That due of many, now is thine alone,  
Their images I loved, I view in thee,  
And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.  
If thou survive my well contented day,  
When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover  
And shalt by fortune once more resurvey:  
These poor rude lines of thy deceased Lover:  
Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,  
And though they be outstripped by every pen,  
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,  
Exceeded by the height of happier men.  
Oh then vouchsafe me but this loving thought,  
Had my friends Muse grown with this growing age,  
A dearer birth than this his love had brought  
To march in ranks of better equipage:  
But since he died and Poets better prove,  
Theirs for their stile i'll read, his for his love.    

Friendly concord.  

IF music and sweet poetry agree,  
As they must needs (the Sister and the brother)  
Then must the love be great twixt thee and me,  
Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.  
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch  
Upon the Lute, doth ravish human sense:  
Spencer to me, whose deep Conceit is such,  
As passing all conceit, needs no defence.  
Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound,  
That Phoebus' Lute (the Queen of music) makes  
And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned,  
When as himself to singing he betakes.  
One God is God of both (as Poets fain)  
One Knight loves Both, and both in thee remain.    

Inhumanity.  

Fair was the morn, when the fair Queen of Love,  
Paler for sorrow then her milk white Dove,  
For Adonis' sake, a youngster proud and wild,  
Her stand she takes upon a steep up hill.  
Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds,  
She silly Queen, with more than loves good will,  
Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds,  
Once (quoth she) did I see a fair sweet youth  
Here in these brakes, deep wounded with a boar,  
Deep in the thigh a spectacle of ruth,  
See in my thigh (quoth she) here was the sore,  
She showed hers, he saw more wounds than one,  
And blushing fled, and left her all alone.    

A congratulation.  

HOw can my Muse want subject to invent  
While thou dost breath that pourest into my verse,  
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent,  
For every vulgar paper to rehearse:  
Oh give thyself the thanks if aught in me,  
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight,  
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,  
When thou thyself dost give invention light?  
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth  
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate,  
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth  
Eternal numbers to outlive long date.  
If my slight Muse do please these curious days,  
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise.  
Oh how thy worth with manners may I sing,  
When thou art all the better part of me?  
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring;  
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee,  
Even for this, let us divided live,  
And our dear love loose name of single one,  
That by this separation I may give:  
That due to thee which thou deserv'st alone:  
Oh absence what a torment wouldst thou prove,  
Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave,  
To entertain the time with thoughts of love,  
Which time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceive.  
And that thou teachest how to make one twain,  
By praising him here who doth hence remain.  
Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all,  
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?  
No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call,  
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more:  
Then if for my love, thou my love receivest.  
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest,  
But yet be blamed, if thou this self deceavest  
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.  
I do forgive thy robbery gentle thief  
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:  
And yet love knows it is a greater grief  
To bear loves wrong, than hates known injury.  
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows▪  
Kill me with spites yet we must not be foes    

Loss and gain.  

THose pretty wrongs that liberty commits,  
When I am sometimes absent from thy heart,  
Thy beauty, and thy years full well befits,  
For still temptation follows where thou art.  
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won,  
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed.  
And when a woman woos, what woman's son,  
Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed.  
ay me, but yet thou might●● my seat forbear,  
And chide thy beauty, and thy straying youth,  
Who lead thee in their riot even there  
Where thou art for●'t to break a twofold truth:  
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,  
Thine by thy beauty being false to me.  
That thou hast her it is not all my grief,  
And yet it may be said I loved her dearly,  
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,  
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.  
Loving offenders thus I will excuse ye,  
Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her,  
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,  
Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her,  
If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,  
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss;  
Both find each other, and I lose both ●waine,  
And both for my sake lay on me this cross,  
But here's the joy, my friend and I are one,  
Sweet flattery, than she loves but me alone.    

Foolish disdain.  

Venus' with Adonis sitting by her,  
Under a myrtle shade began to woo him,  
She told the youngling how god Mars did try her,  
And as he fell to her, she fell to him,  
Even thus (quoth she) the warlike god embraced me,  
And then she clipped Adonis in her arms:  
Even thus (quoth she) the warlike god unlaced me,  
As if the boy should use like loving charms:  
Even thus (quoth she) he seized on my lips,  
And with her lips on his did act the seizure:  
And as she fetched breath, away he skips,  
And would not take her meaning nor her pleasure.  
Ah, that I had my Lady at this bay:  
To kiss and clip me till I run away.    

Ancient Antipothy.  

CRabbed age and youth cannot live together,  
Youth is full of pleasance, Age is full of care,  
Youth like summer morn, Age like winter weather,  
Youth like summer brave, Age like winter bare.  
Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short,  
Youth is nimble, Age is lame,  
Youth is hot and bold, Age is weak and cold,  
Youth is wild, and age is tame.  
Age I do abhor thee, Youth I do adore thee,  
O my love my love is young:  
Age I do defy thee, Oh sweet shepherd hie thee:  
For methinks thou stays too long.    

Beauty's valuation.  

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good,  
A shining gloss, that vadeth suddenly,  
A flower that dies, when first it 'gins to bud,  
A brittle glass, that's broken presently.  
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,  
Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.  
And as goods lost, are ●eld or never found,  
As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh,  
As flowers dead, lie withered on the ground,  
As broken glass no symant can redress.  
So beauty blemished once, for ever lost,  
Inspite of physic, painting, pain and cost.    

Melancholy thoughts.  

IF the dull substance of my flesh were thought,  
Injurious distance should not stop my way,  
For then despite of space I would be brought,  
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay,  
No matter then although my foot did stand  
Upon the farthest earth remooved from thee,  
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,  
As soon as think the place where he would be.  
But ah, thought kills me that I am not thought  
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone,  
But that so much of earth and water wrought,  
I must attend, times leisure with my moan.  
Receiving naughts by elements so slow,  
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.  
The other two, slight air, and purging fire,  
Are both with thee, where ever I abide,  
The first my thought, the other my desire,  
These present absent with swift motion slide.  
For when these quicker Elements are gone  
In tender embassy of love to thee,  
My life being made of four, with two alone,  
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy.  
Until lives composition be recured,  
By those swift messengers returned from thee,  
Who even but now come back again assured,  
Of their fair health, recounting it to me.  
This told, I joy, but then no longer glad,  
I send them back again and straight grow sad.    

love's loss.  

SWeet Rose, fair flower, untimely plucked, soon vaded,  
Plukt in the bud, and vaded in the spring:  
Bright Orient pearl, alack too timely shaded,  
Fair creature, killed too soon by death's sharp sting:  
Like a green plumb that hangs upon a tree:  
And falls (through wind) before the fall should be.  
I weep for thee, and yet no cause I have,  
For why; thou left'st me nothing in thy Will,  
And yet thou left'st me more than I did crave,  
For why: I craved nothing of thee still:  
O yes (Dear friend) I pardon crave of thee,  
Thy discontent thou didst bequeathe to me.    

love's relief.  

Full many a glorious morning have I seen,  
Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye,  
Kissing with golden face the meadows green;  
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy:  
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride,  
With ugly rack on his celestial face,  
And from the forlorn world his visage hide  
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace:  
Even so my sun one early morn did shine,  
With all triumphant splendour on my brow,  
But out alack, he was but one hour mine,  
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.  
Yet him for this, my love no whit disdaineth,  
Suns of the world may stain, when heaven's sun stayne●.  
Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day,  
And make me travail forth without my cloak,  
To let base clouds o'er take me in my way,  
Hiding thy bravery in their rotten smoke.  
'tis not enough that through the cloud thou break,  
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face,  
For no man well of such a salve can speak,  
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace:  
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief,  
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss,  
Th' offenders sorrow lends but weak relief  
To him that bears the strong offences loss.  
Ah but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds,  
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds.  
No more be greeved at that which thou hast done,  
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud,  
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,  
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.  
All men make faults, and even I in this,  
Authorising thy trespass with compare,  
Myself corrupting salving thy amiss,  
Excusing their sins more than their sins are:  
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense,  
Thy adverse party is thy Advocate,  
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence,  
Such civil war is in my love and hate,  
That I an accessar● needs must be,  
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.    

Unanimity.  

LEt me confess that we two must be twain.  
Although our undivided loves are one:  
So shall those blots that do with me remain,  
Without thy help, by me be borne alone.  
In our two loves there is but one respect,  
Though in our lives a separable spite,  
Which though it alter not loves sole effect,  
Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight:  
I may not evermore acknowledge thee,  
lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame,  
Nor thou with public kindness honour me,  
Unless thou take that honour from thy name:  
But do not so, I love thee in such sort,  
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.  
As a decrepit father takes delight,  
To see his active child do deeds of youth,  
So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite  
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.  
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,  
Or any of these all, or all, or more  
entitled in their parts, do crowned sit.  
I make my love engrafted to this store:  
So than I am not lame, poor, nor despised,  
Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give,  
That I in thy abundance an sufficed,  
And by a part of all thy glory live:  
Look what is best, that best I wish in thee,  
This wish I have, then ten times happy me.    

Loath to depart.  

GOod night, good rest, ah neither be my share,  
She bade good night, that kept my rest away,  
And daft me to a cabin hanged with care:  
To descant on the doubts of my decay,  
Farewell (quoth she) and come again tomorrow:  
Farewell I could not, for I supped with sorrow.  
Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile,  
In scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether:  
'T may be she joyed to jest at my exile.  
'T may be again, to make me wander thither.  
Wander (a word) for shadows like myself,  
As take the pain, but cannot pluck the pelf.  
Lord how mine eyes throw gazes to the East,  
My heart doth charge the watch, the morning rise  
Doth scite each moving sense from idle rest,  
Not daring trust the office of mine eyes.  
While Philomela sits and sings, I sit and mark,  
And wish her lays were tuned like the lark.  
For she doth welcome daylight with her ditty,  
And drives away dark dreaming night:  
The night so packed, I post unto my pretty,  
Hart hath his hope, and eyes their wished sight,  
Sorrow changed to solace, and solace mixed with sorrow,  
For why, she sight, and bade me come tomorrow.  
Were I with her, the night would post too soon,  
But now are minutes added to the hours:  
To spite me now, each minute seems an hour,  
Yet not for me, shine sun to succour flowers.  
Pack night peep day, good day of night now borrow,  
Short night to night, and length thyself tomorrow.    

A masterpiece.  

MIne eye hath played the Painter and hath steeled,  
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart,  
My body is the frame wherein ti's held,  
And perspective it is best Painters Art.  
For through the Painter must you see his skill,  
To find where your true Image pictured lies,  
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,  
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes:  
Now see what good-turns eyes for eyes have done,  
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me  
Are windows to my breast, where through the Sun  
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee  
Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art  
They draw but what they see, know not the heart.    

Happiness in content.  

LEt those who are in favour with their stars,  
Of public honour and proud titles boast,  
Whilst I whom fortune of such triumph bars  
Unlooked for joy in that I honour most;  
Great Princes favourites their fair leaves spread,  
But as the Marigold at the sun's eye,  
And in themselves their pride lies buried,  
For at a frown they in their glory die.  
The painful warrior famosed for worth,  
After a thousand victories once foiled,  
Is from the book of honour razed quite,  
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled;  
Then happy I that love and am beloved  
Where I may not remove, nor be removed.    

A dutiful Message.  

LOrd of my love, to whom in vassalage  
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit;  
To thee I send this written ambassage  
To witness duty, not to show my wit.  
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine  
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it;  
But that I hope some good conceit of thine  
In thy soul's thought (all naked) will bestow it:  
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving,  
Points on me graciously with fair aspect,  
And puts apparrall on my tottered loving,  
To show me worthy of their sweet respect,  
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee,  
Till then, not show my head where thou Mayst prove me.    

Go and come quickly.  

HOw heavy do I journey on the way,  
When what I seek (my weary travels end)  
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,  
Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend.  
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,  
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,  
As if by some instinct the wretch did know  
His rider loved not speed being made from thee:  
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,  
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,  
Which heavily he answers with a groan,  
More sharp to me then spurring to his side,  
For that same groan doth put this in my mind,  
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.  
Thus can my love excuse the slow offence,  
Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed,  
From where thou art, why should I hast me thence,  
Till I return of posting is no need.  
O what excuse will my poor beast then find,  
When swift extremity can seem but slow,  
Then should I spur though mounted on the wind,  
In winged speed no motion shall I know,  
Then can no horse with my desire keep pace,  
Therefore desire (of perfects love being made)  
Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race,  
But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade,  
Since from thee going, he went wilful slow,  
Towards thee i'll run, and give him leave to go.    

Two faithful friends.  

MIne eye and heart are at a mortal war,  
How to divide the conquest of thy sight,  
Mine eye, my heart their pictures sight would bar,  
My heart, mine eye the freedom of that right,  
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,  
(A closet never pierced with crystal eyes)  
But the defendant doth that plea deny,  
And says in him their fair appearance lies.  
To side this title is impanelled  
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart,  
And by their verdict is determined  
The clear eyes moiety, and the dear heart's part.  
As thus mine eyes due is their outward part  
And my hearts right, their inward love of heart.  
Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,  
And each doth good turns now unto the other,  
When that mine eye is famished for a look,  
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother;  
With my love's picture then my eye doth feast,  
And to the painted banquet bids my heart:  
Another time mine eye is my heart's guest,  
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part.  
So either by thy picture or my love,  
Thyself away, are present still with me,  
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,  
And I am still with them, and they with thee.  
Or if they sleep, thy picture in my sight  
Awakes my heart, to hearts and eyes delight.    

Careless neglect.  

HOw careful was I when I took my way,  
Each trifle under truest bars to thrust,  
That to my use it might unused stay  
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust?  
But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are,  
Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief,  
Thou best of dearest, and mine only care,  
Art left the prey of every vulgar thief.  
Thee have I not locked up in any chest,  
Save where thou art not, though I feel thou art,  
Within the gentle closure of my breast,  
From whence at pleasure thou Mayst come and part,  
And even thence thou wilt be stolen I fear,  
For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear.    

Stout resolution.  

AGainst that time (if ever that time come)  
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,  
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,  
Called to that audite by advised respects,  
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,  
And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye,  
When love converted from the thing it was  
Shall reasons find of settled gravity.  
Against that time do I in sconce me here  
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,  
And this my hand, against myself upreare,  
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part,  
To leave poor me, thou hast the strength of laws,  
Since why to love, I can allege no cause.    

A Duell.  

IT was a Lordings daughter,  
The fairest one of three  
That liked of her master, as well as well might be,  
Till looking on an Englishman,  
The fairest eye could see,  
Her fancy fell a turning.  
Long was the combat doubtful,  
That love with love did fight,  
To leave the master lovelesse, or kill the gallant Knight,  
To put in practice either, alas it was a spite  
Unto the silly damsel.  
But one must be refused, more mickle was the pain,  
That nothing could be used, to turn them both to gain,  
For of the two the trusty knight was  
Wounded with disdain,  
Alas she could not help it.  
Thus art with arms contending, was victor of the day,  
Which by a gift of learning, did bear the maid away,  
Then lullaby the learned man hath got the Lady gay,  
For now my song is ended.    

Love-sick.  

ON a day (Alack the day)  
Love whose month was ever May,  
Spied a blossom passing fair,  
Playing in the wanton air;  
Through the velvet leaves the wind  
All unseen 'gan passage find,  
That the lover (Sick to death)  
Wished himself the heaven's breath,  
Air (quoth he) thy cheeks may blow,  
Air, would I might triumph so:  
But (alas) my hand hath sworn,  
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy throne,  
Vow (Alack) for youth unmeet,  
Youth, so apt to pluck a sweet,  
Thou for whom Jove would swear,  
Juno but an Aethiop were,  
And deny himself for Jove  
Turning mortal for thy Love.    

love's labour lost.  

MY flocks feed not my Ewes breed not,  
My Rams speed not, all is amiss:  
Love is dying, Faiths defying,  
Hearts denying, causer of this.  
All my merry jigs are quite forgot,  
All my Lady's love is lost (god wot)  
Where her faith was firmly fixed in love,  
There a nay is placed without remove.  
One silly cross, wrought all my loss,  
O frowning fortune cursed fickle dame,  
For now I see, inconstancy,  
More in women then in men remain.  
In black mourn I, all fears scorn I,  
Love hath forlorn me living in thrall:  
Heart is bleeding, all help needing,  
O cruel speeding, fraughted with gall.  
My shepheards pipe can sound no deal,  
My wether's bell rings doleful knell,  
My curtail dog that wont to have played,  
Plays not at all but seems afraid.  
With sighs so deep, procures to weep,  
In howling wise, to see my doleful plight,  
How sighs resound through heartless ground  
Like a thousand vanquished men in bloody fight.  
Clear wells spring not, sweet birds sing not,  
Green plants bring not forth their dye,  
Herds stands weeping, flocks all sleeping,  
Nymphs black peeping fearfully:  
All our pleasure known to us poor swains:  
All our merry meetings on the plains,  
All our evening sport from us is fled,  
All our love is lost, for love is dead,  
Farewell sweet love thy like ne'er was,  
For a sweet content the cause of all my woe,  
Poor Coridon must live alone,  
Other help for him I see that there is none.    

Wholesome counsel.  

WHen as thine eye hath chose the Dame,  
And stalled the dear that thou shouldst strike,  
Let reason rule things worthy blame,  
As well as fancy (partly all might)  
Take counsel of some wiser head,  
Neither too young, nor yet unwed,  
And when thou com'st thy tale to tell,  
Smooth not thy tongue with filled talk,  
lest she some subtle practice smell,  
A Cripple soon can find a halt,  
But plainly say thou lov'st her well,  
And set her person forth to sale.  
What though her frowning brows be bent  
Her cloudy looks will calm ere night,  
And then too late she will repent,  
That thus dissembled her delight.  
And twice desire ere it be day,  
That which with scorn she put away.  
What though she strive to try her strength,  
And ban and brawl, and say thee nay:  
Her feeble force will yield at length.  
When craft hath taught her thus to say:  
Had women been so strong as men  
In faith you had not had it then.  
And to her will frame all thy ways,  
Spare not to spend, and chiefly there,  
Where thy desert may merit praise  
By ringing in thy Lady's ear,  
The strongest castle, tower and town,  
The golden bullet beats it down.  
Serve always with assured trust,  
And in thy suit be humble true,  
Unless thy Lady prove unjust,  
Pr●ase never thou to choose a new:  
When time shall serve, be thou not slack,  
To proffer though she put it back.  
The wiles and guiles that women work,  
Dissembled with an outward show:  
The tricks and toys that in them lurk,  
The Cock that treads them shall not know,  
Have you not heard it said full oft,  
A woman's nay doth stand for nought.  
Think women still to strive with men,  
To sin and never for to Saint,  
There is no heaven (by holy then)  
When time with age shall them attaint,  
Were kisses all the joys in bed,  
One woman would another wed.  
But soft enough, too much I fear,  
lest that my Mistress hear my song,  
She will not stick to round me on th'ere,  
To teach my tongue to be so long:  
Yet will she blush, here be it said,  
To hear her secrets so bewrayed.    

Sat fuisse.  

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,  
And all my soul, and all my every part;  
And for this sin there is no remedy,  
It is so grounded inward in my heart.  
Me thinks no face so gracious is as mine,  
No shape so true; no truth of such account,  
And for myself mine own worth do define,  
As I all other in all worths surmount.  
But when my glass shows me myself indeed  
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity,  
Mine own self love quite contrary I read  
Self, so self loving were iniquity,  
'Tis thee (my self) that for myself I praise,  
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.    

A living monument.  

NOt marble, nor the guilded monument,  
Of Princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,  
But you shall shine more bright in these contents  
Then unswept stone, besmeer'd with sluttish time.  
When wasteful war shall Statues overturn,  
And broils root out the work of masonry,  
Nor Mars his sword, no● wars quick fire shall burn:  
The living record of your memory.  
'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity  
Shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,  
Even in the eyes of all posterity  
That were this world out to the ending doom.  
So till the judgement that yourself arise,  
You live in this, and dwell in lovers eyes.    

Familiarity breeds contempt.  

SO am I as the rich whose blessed key,  
Can bring him to his sweet uplocked treasure,  
The which he will not every hour survey,  
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure,  
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,  
Since seldom coming in the long year set,  
Like stones of worth they thinly placed ar●,  
Or captain jewels in the carconet.  
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,  
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,  
To make some special instant special blessed,  
By new unfoulding his imprisoned pride.  
Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope,  
Being had to triumph, being lacked to hope.    

Patiens Armatus.  

IS it thy will, thy Image should keep open  
My heavy eyelids to the weary night ●  
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,  
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?  
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee  
So far from home into my deeds to pry,  
To find out shames and idle hours in me,  
The scope and ●enure of thy jealousy?  
O no, thy love though much, is not so great,  
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake,  
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,  
To play the watchman ever for thy sake.  
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,  
From me far of, with others all too near.    

A Valediction.  

NO longer mourn for me when I am dead,  
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell  
Give warning to the world that I am fled  
From this vile world with vildest worms to dwell:  
Nay if you read this line, remember not,  
The hand that writ it, for I love you so,  
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,  
If thinking on me then should make you wot,  
O if (I say) you look upon this verse,  
When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,  
Do not so much as my poor name reh●●se,  
But let your love even with my life decay.  
lest the wise world should look into your mo●●e,  
And mock you with me after I am gone.  
O lest the world should task you to recite,  
What merit lived in me that you should love  
After my death (Dear love) forget me quite,  
For you in me can nothing worthy prove.  
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,  
To do more for me then mine own desert,  
And hang more praise upon deceased I,  
Then niggard truth would willingly impart:  
O lest your true love may seem false in this,  
That you for love speak well of me untrue,  
My name be buried where my body is,  
And live no more to shame nor me, nor you.  
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,  
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.  
But be contented when that fell arrest,  
Without all bail shall carry me away,  
My life hath in this line some interest,  
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.  
When thou reviewest this, thou dost review,  
The very part was consecrate to thee,  
The earth can have but earth, which is his due,  
My spirit is thine the better part of me,  
So than thou hast but lost the dregs of life,  
The prey of worms, my body being dead,  
The coward conquest of a wretch's knife,  
To base of thee to be remembered.  
The worth of that, is that which it contains,  
And that is this, and this with thee remains.    

Nil magnic Invidia.  

THat thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,  
For slanders mark was ever yet the fair,  
The ornament of beauty is suspect,  
A Crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.  
So thou be good, slander doth but approve,  
Their worth the greater being wooed of time,  
For Canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,  
And thou presentest a pure unstayned prime.  
Thou hast past by the ●mbush of young days,  
Either not assailed, or victor being charged,  
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,  
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,  
If some suspect of ill mask not thy show,  
Than thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.    

Love-sick.  

O How I faint when I of you do write,  
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,  
And in the praise thereof spends all his might,  
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.  
But since your worth (wide as the Ocean is)  
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,  
My saucy bark (inferior far to his)  
On your broad maine doth wilfully appear.  
Your shallowe● help will hold me up a float,  
Whilst he upon your soundlesse deep doth ride,  
Or (being wracked) I am a worthless boat,  
He ●f tall building, and of goodly pride.  
Then if he thrive and I be cast away  
The worst was this, my love was my decay,  
Or I shall live your Epitaph to make,  
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten,  
From hence your memory death cannot take,  
Although in me each part will be forgotten.  
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,  
Though I (once gone) to all the world must die,  
The earth can yield me but a common grave,  
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie,  
Your monument shall be my gentle verse,  
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read,  
And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse.  
When all the breathers of this world are dead,  
You still shall live (such virtue hath my Pen)  
Where breath most breaths, even in the mouths of men.    

The Picture of true love.  

LEt me not to the marriage of true minds  
Admit impediments, love is not love  
Which altars when it alteration finds,  
Or bends with the remover to remove.  
O no, it is an ever fixed mark  
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;  
It is the star to every wandering bark,  
Whose worths unknown, although his height be taken.  
love's not Times fool, though rosy lips and cheeks  
Within his bending sickles compass come,  
Love altars not with his brief hours and weeks,  
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:  
If this be error and upon me proved,  
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.    

In praise of his Love.  

I Grant thou wert not married to my Muse,  
And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook  
The dedicated words which writers use  
Of their fair subject, blessing every book.  
Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hew,  
Finding thy worth a limmit past my praise,  
And therefore art enforced to seekeanew,  
Some fresher stamp of the time bettering days.  
And do so love, yet when they have devised,  
What strained touches Rhetorich can lend,  
Thou truly fair, wert truly simpathizde,  
In true plain words, by thy true telling friend.  
And their gross painting might be better u●'d,  
Where cheeks need blood, in thee it is abused.  
I never saw that you did painting need,  
And therefore to your fair no painting set,  
I found (or thought I found) you did exceed,  
The barren tender of a Poet● debt:  
And therefore have I slept in your report,  
That you yourself being extant well might show,  
How far a modern quill doth come to short,  
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow,  
This silence of my sin you did impute,  
Which shall be most my glory being dumb,  
For I impair not beauty being mute,  
When others would give life, and bring a tomb.  
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes,  
Then both your Poets can in praise devise.  
Who is it that says most, which can say more,  
Than this rich praise, that you alone, art you,  
In whose confine immured is the store,  
Which should example where your equal grew,  
Lean penury within that Pen doth dwell,  
That to his subject lends not some small glory,  
But he that writes of you if he can tell,  
That you are you, so dignifies his story.  
Let him but copy what in you is writ,  
Not making worse what nature made so clear,  
And such a counterpart shall same his writ,  
Making his still admired everywhere.  
You to your beauteous blessings add a curse,  
Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse.  
My tongue tied Muse in manners holds her still,  
While comments of your praise richly compiled,  
Reserve their Character with golden quill,  
And precious phrase by all the Muses filled.  
I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,  
And like unlettered clerk still cry Amen,  
To every hymn that able spirit affords,  
In polished form of well refined pen.  
Hearing you praised, I say 'tis so, 'tis true,  
And to the most of praise add something more,  
But that is in my thought, who●e love to you  
(Though words come hindmost) holds his rank before,  
Than others, for the breath of words respect,  
Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.    

A Resignation.  

WAs it the proud full sail of his great verse,  
Bound for the prize of (all to precious) you,  
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse,  
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?  
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write,  
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?  
No neither he, nor his compiers by night  
Giving him aid, my verse astonished.  
He nor that affable familiar ghost  
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence,  
As victors of my silence cannot boast,  
I was not sick of any fear from thence  
But when your countenance filled up his line,  
Then lacked I matter, that enfeebled mine.  
Farewell thou art too dear for my possessing,  
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,  
The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing:  
My bonds in thee are all determinate.  
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,  
And for that riches where is my deserving?  
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,  
And so my patent back again is s●e●ving.  
Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth than not knowing,  
Or me to whom thou ●av'st it, else mist●king,  
So thy great gift upon misprision growing,  
Comes home again, on better judgement making.  
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter,  
In sleep a King, but waking no such matter.    

Sympathising love.  

AS it fell upon a Day,  
In the merry month of May,  
Sitting in a pleasant shade,  
Which a grove of Myrtles made,  
Beasts did leap, and Birds did sing,  
Trees did grow, and Plants did spring:  
Every thing did banish moan,  
Save the Nightingale alone,  
She (Poor Bird) as all forlorn,  
Leaned her breast up-till a thorn,  
And there sung the dolefulst ditty,  
That to hear it was great pity,  
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry  
Teru, Teru, by and by:  
That to hear her so complain,  
Scarce I could from tears refrain:  
For her griefs so lovely shown,  
Made me think upon mine own.  
Ah (thought I) thou mournest in vain,  
None takes pity on thy pain:  
Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee,  
Ruthless bears, they will not ●heere thee,  
King Pa●dion, he is dead:  
All thy friends are leapt in Lead.  
All thy fellow Birds do sing,  
Careless of thy sorrowing.  
Whilst as fickle Fortune smiled,  
Thou and I, were both beguiled,  
Every one that flatters thee,  
Is no friend in misery:  
Words are easy, like the wind,  
Faithful friends are hard to find:  
Every man will be thy friend,  
Whilst thou haste wherewith to spend:  
But if store of crowns be scant,  
No man will supply thy want,  
If that one be prodigal,  
Bountiful they will him call:  
And with such like flattering,  
Pity but he were a King.  
If he be addict to vice,  
Quickly him they will entice.  
If to women he be bent,  
They have at commandment  
But if Fortune once do frown,  
Then farewell his great renown  
They that fawned on him before,  
Use his company no more.  
He that is thy friend indeed,  
He will help thee in thy need:  
If thou sorrow, he will weep:  
If thou awake, he cannot sleep:  
Thus of every grief, in heart  
He, with thee, doth bear a part.  
These are certain signs, to know  
Faithful friend, from flattering foe    

Arequest to his scornful Love.  

WHen thou shalt be disposed to set me light,  
And place my merit in the eye of scorn,  
Upon thy side, against thyself I'll fight,  
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn:  
With mine own weakness being best acquainted,  
Upon thy part I can set down a story  
Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted:  
That thou in losing me, shall win much glory:  
And I by this will be a gainer too,  
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,  
The injuries that to myself I do,  
Doing thee vantage, double vantage me.  
Such is my love, to thee I so belong,  
That for thy right, myself will bear all wrong.  
Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault,  
And I will comment upon that offence,  
Speak of my lamene●●e, and I straight will halt:  
Against thy reasons making no defence.  
Thou canst not (love) disgrace me half so ill,  
To set a form upon desired change,  
As isle myself disgrace, knowing thy will,  
I will acquaintance strangle and look strange:  
Be absent from thy walks and in my tongue,  
Thy sweet belooved name no more shall dwell,  
lest I (too much profane) should do it wrong:  
And haply of our old acquaintance tell.  
For thee, against myself I'll vow debate,  
For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate.  
Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now,  
Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,  
Join with the spite of fortune; make me bow,  
And do not drop in for an after loss:  
Ah do not, when my heart hath scaped this sorrow,  
Come in the rearward of a conquered woe,  
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,  
To linger out a purposed overthrow.  
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,  
When other petty griefs have done their spite,  
But in the onset come, so shall I taste  
At first the very worst of fortunes might.  
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,  
Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.  
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,  
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,  
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill:  
Some in their hawks and bounds, some in their Horse.  
And every humour hath his adjunct pkasure,  
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,  
But these particulars are not my measure,  
All these I better in one general best.  
Thy love is better than high birth to me,  
Richer than wealth, prouder than garments cost,  
Of more delight than hawks or Horses be:  
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast.  
Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take.  
All this away, and me most wretched make.    

A lover's affection though his Love prove unconstant.  

But do thy worst to steal thyself away,  
For term of life thou art assured mine,  
And life no longer than my love will stay,  
For it depends upon that love of thine.  
Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs,  
When in the least of them my life hath end,  
I see, a better state to me belongs  
Then that, which on my humour doth depend.  
Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind,  
Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie,  
Oh what a happy title do I find,  
Happy to have thy love, happy to die!  
But what's so blessed fair that fears no blot,  
Thou Mayst be false, and yet I know it not.  
So shall I live, supposing thou art true,  
Like a deceived husband, so loves face  
May still seem love to me, though altered new:  
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place.  
For their can live no hatred in thine eye,  
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change,  
In manies looks, the false heart's history  
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.  
But heaven in thy creation did decree,  
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell,  
What ere thy thoughts, or thy hearts workings be,  
Thy looks should nothing thence, but sweetness tell.  
How like E●es apple doth thy beauty grow,  
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show.  
They that have power to hurt, and will do none,  
That do not do the thing they most do show,  
Who moving others, are themselves as stone,  
Vnmooved, cold, and to temptation slow:  
They rightly do inherit heavens graces,  
And husband natures riches from expense,  
They are the Lords and owners of their faces,  
Others, but stewards of their excellence:  
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,  
Though to itself, it only live and die,  
But if that flower with base infection meet,  
The basest weed out-braves his dignity:  
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds,  
Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds.  
How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame,  
Which like a canker in the fragrant Rose,  
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name?  
Oh in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose?  
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,  
(Making lascivious comments on thy sport)  
Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,  
Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.  
Oh what a mansion have those vices got,  
Which for their habitation choose out thee,  
Where beauties veil doth cover every blot,  
And all things turns to fair, that eyes can see!  
Take heed (Dear heart) of this large privilege,  
The hardest knife ill used doth lose his edge.    

Complaint for his love's absence.  

HOw like a Winter hath my absence been  
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year?  
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen?  
What old December's bareness everywhere?  
And yet this time removed was sommers time,  
The teeming autumn big with rich increase,  
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,  
Like widowed wombs after their Lord's decease:  
Yet this abundant iflue seemed to me,  
But hope of Orphans, and unfathered fruit,  
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,  
And thou away, the very birds are mute.  
Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,  
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.  
From you have I been absent in the spring,  
When proud pied April (Dressed in all his trim)  
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing:  
That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him,  
Yet not the lays of birds, nor the sweet ●●ell  
Of different flowers in odour and in hew,  
Could make me any summer's story te●●:  
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.  
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,  
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the Rose.  
They were but sweet, but figures of delight:  
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.  
Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,  
As with your shadow I with these did play.  
The forward violet thus did I chide,  
Sweet thief whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,  
If not from my love's breath, the purple pride,  
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells?  
In my love's veins thou hast too grossly died,  
The lily I condemned for thy hand,  
And buds of Marjerom had stolen thy hair,  
The Roses fearfully on thorns did stand,  
Our blushing shame, another white despair:  
A third nor red, nor white, had stolen of both,  
And to his robbery had annexed thy breath,  
But for his theft in pride of all his growth,  
A vengeful canker eat him up to death.  
More flowers I noted, yet I none could see,  
But sweet, or colour it had stolen from thee.    

An invocation to his Muse.  

WHere art thou Muse that thou forget●● so l●●g,  
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?  
Spendst thou thy fury on some worthless song,  
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light.  
Return forgetful Muse, and straight redeem,  
In gentle numbers time so idly spent,  
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,  
And give thy pen both skill and argument.  
Rise resty Muse, my loves sweet face survey,  
If time have any wrinkle graven there,  
If any, be a Satire to decay,  
And make times spoils despised everywhere.  
Give my love fame, faster than time wast life,  
So thou prevenst his scythe, and crooked knife.  
Oh truant Muse what shall be thy amends,  
For thy neglect of truth in beauty died?  
But truth and beauty on my love depends:  
So dost thou too, and therein dignified:  
Make answer Muse, wilt thou not haply say,  
Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed,  
Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay:  
But best is best, if never intermixed.  
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb?  
Excuse not silence so, for't lies in thee,  
To make her much outlive a gilded tomb:  
And to be praised of ages yet to be.  
Then do thy office muse, I teach thee how,  
To make her seem long hence, as she shows now.    

Constant affection.  

TO me fair love you never can be old,  
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,  
Such seems your beauty still: Three Winters cold,  
Have from the forests shook three summer's pride,  
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned,  
In process of the seasons have I seen,  
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned,  
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are greeno.  
Ah yet doth beauty like a dial hand,  
Steal from his figure, and no place perceived,  
So your sweet hew, which me thinks still doth stand  
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.  
For fear of which, hear this thou age unbred,  
Ere you were borne was beauties summer dead.  
Let not my love be called idolatry,  
Nor my beloved as an idol show,  
Since all alike my songs and praises be  
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.  
Kind is my love to day, to morrow kind,  
Still constant in a wondrous excellence,  
Therefore my verse to constancy cozened,  
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.  
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,  
Fair, kind and true, varrying to other words,  
And in this change is my invention spent,  
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.  
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone.  
Which three till now, never kept seat in one.  
When in the Chronicle of wasted time,  
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,  
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,  
In praise of Ladies dead, and lovely Knights,  
Then in the blazon of sweet beauties best,  
Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,  
I see their antique Pen would have expressed,  
Even such a beauty as you master now.  
So all their praises are but prophecies  
Of this our time, all you prefiguring,  
And for they looked but with divining eyes,  
They had not still enough your worth to sing:  
For we which now behold these present days,  
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.    

Amazement.  

MY love is strengthened though more weak in seeming  
I love not less, though less the show appear,  
That love is marchandized, whose rich esteeming,  
The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.  
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,  
When I was wont to greet it with my lays,  
As Philomela in Summers' front doth sing,  
And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:  
Not that the Summer is less pleasant now  
Then when her mournful hymns did hush the night,  
But that wild music burdens every bow,  
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.  
Therefore like her I sometime hold my tongue:  
Because I would not dull you with my song.  
Alack what poverty my Muse brings forth,  
That having such a scope to show her pride,  
The argument all bare, is of more worth,  
Then when it hath my added praise beside.  
Oh blame me not if I no more can write!  
Look in your glass and there appears a face,  
That overgoes my blunt invention quite,  
Dulling my lines, and doing me disgrace.  
Were it not sinful then striving to mend,  
To mar the subject that before was well,  
For to no other pass my verses tend,  
Then of your graces and your gifts to tell.  
And more, much more th●n in my verse can sit,  
Your own glass shows you, when you look in it.    

A lover's excuse for his long absence.  

O Never say that I was false of heart,  
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,  
As easy might I from myself depart,  
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:  
That is my home of love, if I have ranged,  
Like him that travels I return again,  
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,  
So that myself bring water for my stain,  
Never believe though in my nature reigned,  
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,  
That it could so pr●posterously be stained,  
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good:  
For nothing this wide universe I call,  
Save thou my Rose, in it thou art my all.  
Alas 'tis true, I have gone here and there,  
And made myself a motley to the view,  
Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,  
Made old offences of affections new.  
Most true it is, that I have looked on truth  
Askance and strangely: But by all above,  
These blenches gave my heart another youth,  
And worse affaies proved thee my best of love,  
Now all is done, have what shall have no end,  
Mine appetite I never more will grind  
On newer proof, to try an older friend,  
A God in love, to whom I am confined.  
Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,  
Even to thy pure and most most loving breast.    

A complaint.  

OFor my sake do you wish fortune chide,  
The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds,  
That did not better for my life provide,  
Then public means which public manners breeds.  
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand,  
And almost thence my nature is subdued  
To what it works in, like the Dyers hand,  
Pity me then, and wish I were renu'de,  
Whilst like a willing patient I will drink,  
Potions of easel 'gainst my strong infection,  
No bitterness that I will bitter think,  
Nor double penance to correct correction.  
Pity me then dear friend, and I assure ye,  
Even that your pity is enough to cure me.  
Your love and pity doth th'impression fill,  
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow,  
For what care I who calls me well or ill,  
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?  
You are my All the world, and I must strive,  
To know my shames and praises from your tongue,  
None else to me, nor I to none alive,  
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong,  
In so profound abysm I throw all care  
Of others voices, that my Adderssence,  
To cryttick and to flatterer stopped are:  
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense.  
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,  
That all the world beside, me thinks y'are dead.    

Self flattery of her beauty.  

SInce I left you, mine eye is in my mind,  
And that which governs me to go about,  
Doth part his function, and is partly blind,  
Seems seeing, but effectually is out:  
For it no form delivers to the heart  
Of birds, or flower, or shape which it doth lack,  
Of his quick objects hath the mind no part,  
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch:  
For if it see the rudest or gentlest sight,  
The most sweet favour or deformedst creature,  
The mountain, or the sea, the day, or night:  
The Crow, or Dove, it shapes them to your feature.  
Incapable of more replete, with you,  
My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.  
Or whether doth my mind being crowned with you  
Drink up the monarchs plague this flattery?  
Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true,  
And that your love taught it this alchemy  
To make of monsters, and things indigest,  
Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble,  
Creating every bad a perfect best  
As fast as objects to his beams assemble:  
Oh 'tis the first, 'tis flattery in my seeing,  
And my great mind most kindly drinks it up,  
Mine eye well knows what with his gust is greeing,  
And to his palate doth prepare the cup.  
If it be poisoned, 'tis the lesser sin,  
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin.  
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,  
Even those that said I could not love you dearer,  
Yet than my judgement knew no reason why,  
My most full fla●e should afterwards burn clearer.  
But reckoning time, whose milliond accidents  
Creep in twixt vows, and change decrees of Kings,  
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharpest intents,  
Divert strong minds to th'course of altering things:  
Alas why fearing of times tyranny,  
Might I not then say now I love you best,  
When I was certain o'er incertainty,  
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest:  
Love is a Babe, then might I not say so  
To give full growth to that which still doth grow.    

Trial of love's constancy.  

ACcuse me thus, that I have scanted all,  
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,  
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,  
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day,  
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,  
And given to time your own dear purchased right,  
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds  
Which should transport me farthest from your sight.  
Book both my wilfulness and error down,  
And on just proof surmise, accumilate,  
Bring me within the level of your frown,  
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate:  
Since my appeal says I did strive to prove  
The constancy and virtue of your love.  
Like as to make our appetites more keen  
With eager compounds we our palate urge,  
As to prevent our maladies unseen,  
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge.  
Even so being full of your near cloying sweetness,  
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding;  
And sick of welfare found a kind of meetness,  
To be diseas'ed ere that there was true needing.  
Thus policy in love t'anticipate  
The ills that were, not grew to faults assured,  
And brought to medicine a healthful state  
Which rank of goodness would by ill be cured.  
But thence I learn and find the lesson true,  
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.  
What potions have I drunk of Siren teare●  
Distiled from Limbecks foul as hell within.  
Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears,  
Still losing when I saw myself to win?  
What wretched errors hath my heart committed,  
Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never?  
How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted  
In the distraction of this madding fever?  
O benefit of ill, now I find true  
That better is, by evil still made better.  
And ruined love when it is built anew  
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.  
So I return rebuke to my content,  
And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.    

A good construction of his Love: unkindness.  

THat you were once unkind befriends me now;  
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,  
Needs must I under my transgression bow,  
Unless my Nerves were brass or hammered steel.  
For if you were by my unkindness shaken  
As I by yours, y'have past a hell of Time,  
And I a tyrant have no leisure taken  
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.  
O that our night of woe might have remembered  
My deepest sense how ●ard true sorrow hits,  
And soon to you, as you to me then tendered  
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!  
But that your trespass now becomes a fee,  
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.    

Error in opinion.  

'tIs better to be vile then vile esteemed.  
When not to be, receives reproach of being,  
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed,  
Not by our feeling, but by others seeing.  
For why should others false adulterate eyes  
Give salutation to my sportive blood?  
Or on my frailties why are ●railer spies;  
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?  
No, I am that I am, and they that level  
At my abuses, reckon up their own,  
I may be straight though they themselves be bevell  
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be shown  
Unless this general evil they maintain,  
All men are bad and in their badness reign.    

Upon the receipt of a Table book from his Mistress.  

THy gift, thy tables, are within my brain  
Full charactered with lasting memory,  
Which shall above that idle rank remain  
Beyond all date even to eternity.  
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart  
Have faculty by nature to subsist,  
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part  
Of thee, thy record never can be missed:  
That poor retention could not so much hold,  
Nor need I talleys thy dear love to score.  
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,  
To trust those tables that receive thee more,  
To keep an adjunckt to remember thee,  
Were to import forgetfulness in me.    

A Vow.  

NO! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change,  
Thy pyramyds built up with newer might  
To me are nothing novel, nothing strange,  
They are but dressings of a former sight:  
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire,  
What thou dost foist upon us that is old,  
And rather make them borne to our desire,  
Then think that we before have heard them told:  
Thy registers and thee I both defy,  
Not wondering at the present nor the past,  
For thy records, and what we see doth lie,  
Made more or less by thy continual haste:  
This I do vow and this shall ever be,  
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee.    

love's safety.  

IF my dear love were but the child of state,  
It might for fortune's bastard be unfathered,  
As subject to times love, or to times hate,  
Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered.  
No it was builded far from accident,  
It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls  
Under the blow of thralled discontent,  
Whereto th'inviting time our fashion calls:  
It fears not policy that heretic,  
Which works on leases of short numbered hours,  
But all alone stands hugely politic,  
That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers.  
To this I witness call the fools of time,  
Which die for goodness, who have lived for crime.    

An entreaty for her acceptance.  

WEr'● ought to me I bore the canopy,  
With my extern the outward honouring,  
Or laid great bases for eternity,  
Which proves more short than waste or ruining?  
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour  
Lose all, and more by paying too much rent  
For compound sweet; foregoing simple savour,  
Pitiful thrivors in their gazing spent.  
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,  
And take thou my oblation, poor but free,  
Which is not mixed with seconds, knows no art,  
But ●●tuall render, only me for thee.  
Hence, thou suborned Informer, a true soul  
When most impeached, stands least in thy control.    

Upon her playing on the virginals.  

HOw oft when thou thy music music play'st,  
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds  
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway'st,  
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,  
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap,  
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,  
Whilst my poor lips which should that harvest reap,  
At the woods boldness by thee blushing stand.  
To be so tickled they would change their state,  
And situation with those dancing chips,  
O'er whom their fingers walk with gentle gate,  
Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.  
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,  
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.    

Immoderate Lust.  

TH'expense of Spirit in a waste of shame  
Is lust in action, and till action, lust  
Is perjured, murderous, bloody full of blame,  
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,  
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,  
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had  
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,  
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.  
Made in pursuit and in possession so,  
Had, having, and in quest, to have extreme,  
A bliss in proof and proud and very woe,  
Before a joy proposed behind a dream,  
All this the world well knows yet none knows well,  
To shun the haven that leads men to this hell.    

In praise of her beauty though black.  

IN the old age black was not counted fair,  
Or if it were it bore not beauties name:  
But now is black beauties successive heir,  
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame,  
For since each hand hath put on nature's power,  
Fairing the foul with Arts false borrowed face,  
Sweet beauty hath no name no holy bower,  
But is profaned, if not, lives in disgrace.  
Therefore my Mistress eyes are Raven black,  
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem,  
At such who not borne faite no beauty lack,  
Slandering Creation with a false esteem,  
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,  
That every tongue says beauty should look so,  
My Mistress eyes are nothing like the sun,  
Coral is far more red, than her lips red,  
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:  
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:  
I have seen Roses, damaskt, red, and white,  
But no such Roses see I in her che●kes,  
And in some perfumes is there more delight,  
Then in the breath that from my Mistress recks.  
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,  
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:  
I grant I never saw a goddess go,  
My Mistress when she walks treads on the ground,  
And yet by heaven I think my love as rare,  
As any she belied with false compare.  
Thou art a tyrannous, so as thou art,  
As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel;  
For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart  
Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.  
Yet in good faith some say that thee behold,  
Thy face hath not the power to make love groan;  
To say they err I dare not be so bold,  
Although I swear it to myself alone.  
And to be sure that is not false I swear  
A thousand groans but thinking on thy face,  
One on another's neck do witness bear  
Thy black is fairest in my judgements place.  
In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds,  
And thence this slander as I think proceeds.  
Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me,  
Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain,  
Have put on black, and loving mourners be,  
Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.  
And truly not the morning Sun of Heaven  
Better becomes the grey cheeks of th'East,  
Nor that full star that ushers in the Even  
Doth half that glory to the sober West  
As those two morning eyes become thy face:  
O let it then as well beseem thy heart  
To mourn for me since mourning doth thee grace,  
And suit thy pity like in every part.  
Then will I swear beauty herself is black,  
And all they foul that thy complexion lack.    

Unkind Abuse.  

BE shrew that heart that makes my heart to groan  
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me;  
is't not enough to torture me along,  
But slave to slavery my sweetest friend must be.  
Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,  
And my next self thou harder haste engrossed,  
Of him, myself, and thee I am forsaken,  
A torment thrice threefold thus to be crossed:  
Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward,  
But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail,  
Who e'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,  
Thou canst not then use rigor in my sail.  
And yet thou wilt, for I being penned in thee,  
Perforce am thine, and all that is in me.  
So now I have confessed that he is thine,  
And I myself am mortgaged to thy will,  
Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine,  
Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still:  
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,  
For thou art covetous, and he is kind,  
He learned but surety-like to write for me,  
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind.  
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take,  
Thou usurer that put'st forth all to use,  
And sue a friend, came debtor for my sake,  
So him I lose through my unkind abuse.  
Him have I lost, thou hast both him and me,  
He pays the whole, and yet I am not free.    

A love-suit.  

WHo ever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,  
And will too boot, and will in overplus,  
More than enough am I that vex thee still,  
To thy sweet will making addition thus.  
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,  
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine,  
Shall will in others seem right gracious,  
And in my will no fair acceptance shine:  
The sea all water, yet receives rain still,  
And in abundance addeth to his store,  
So thou being rich in Will add to thy Will,  
One will of mine to make thy large will more.  
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,  
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.  
If thy soul check thee that I come so near,  
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will,  
And will thy soul knows is admitted there,  
Thus far for love, my love-suit sweet fulfil.  
Will, will fulfil the treasure of thy love,  
I fill it full with wills, and my will one,  
In things of great receipt with ease we prove,  
Among a number one is reckoned none.  
Then in the number let me pass untold,  
Though in thy stores account I one must be,  
For nothing hold me so it please thee I old,  
That nothing me, a something sweet to thee.  
Make but my name thy love, and love that still,  
And then thou lovest me, for my name is Will.    

His heart wounded by her eye.  

THou blind fool love, what dost thou to mine eyes,  
That they behold and see not what they see:  
They know what beauty is, see where it lies,  
Yet what the best is, take the worst to be.  
If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks,  
Be anchored in the bay where all men ride,  
Why of eyes falsehood hast thou forged hooks,  
Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied?  
Why should my heart think that a several plot,  
Which my heart knows the wide world's common place?  
Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not  
To put fair truth upon so foul a face,  
In things right true my heart and eyes have erred.  
And to this false plague are they now transferred.  
O call not me to justify the wrong,  
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart,  
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue,  
Use power with power, and slay me not by Art,  
Tell me thou lov'st ese-where; but in my sight,  
Dear heart forbear to glance thine eye aside,  
What needst thou wound with cunning when thy might  
Is more than my ore-prest defence can bide?  
Let me excuse thee, ah my love well knows,  
Her pretty looks have been my enemies,  
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,  
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries.  
Yet do not so, but since I am near slain,  
Kill me outright with looks, and rid my pain.  
Be wise as thou art cruel, do not press  
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain:  
lest sorrow lend me words and words express,  
The manner of my pity wanting pain.  
If I might teach thee wit better it were,  
Though not to love, yet love to tell me so,  
As testy sick-men when their deaths be near,  
No news but health from their physicians know.  
For if I should despair I should grow mad,  
And in my madness might speak ill of thee,  
Now this ill wresting world is grown so bad,  
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.  
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,  
Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go● wide.    

A Protestation.  

IN faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,  
For they in thee a thousand errors note,  
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,  
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote.  
Nor are mine ears with thy tongues tune delighted,  
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,  
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited  
To any sensual feast with the alone:  
But my five wits, nor my five senses can  
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,  
Who leaves unswaied the likeness of a man,  
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:  
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,  
That she that makes me sin, awards me pain.  
Love is my sin, and my dear virtue hate,  
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving,  
O but with mine, compare thou thine own state,  
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving,  
Or if it do, not from those lips of thine,  
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments,  
And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine,  
Robbed others bed's revenues of their rents.  
Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those,  
Whom thine eyes woe as mine importune thee,  
Root pity in thy heart that when it grows,  
Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.  
If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,  
By self example mayst thou be denied,    

An Allusion.  

Lo as a careful huswife runs to catch.  
One of her feathered creatures broke away,  
Sets down her babe and makes all swift dispatch  
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay:  
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase,  
Cries to catch her, whose busy care is bent,  
To follow that which flies before her face,  
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent;  
So run'st thou after that which flies from thee,  
Whilst I thy babe chase thee a far behind,  
But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me:  
And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind.  
So will I pray that thou Mayst have thy Will,  
If thou turn back and my loud crying still.    

Life and death.  

THose lips that Loves own hand did make,  
Breathed forth the sound that said I hate,  
To me that languished for her sake:  
But when she saw my woeful state,  
Straight in her heart did mercy come,  
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet,  
Was usde in giving gentle doom:  
And taught it thus a new to greet:  
I hate she altered with an end,  
That followed it as gentle day,  
Doth follow night, who like a fiend  
From heaven to hell is flown away.  
I hate, from hate away she threw,  
And saved my life saying not you.    

A Consideration of death.  

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,  
My sinful earth these rebel powers that thee array,  
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,  
Painting thy outward walls in costly gay?  
Why so large cost having so short a lease,  
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?  
Shall worms in heritors of this excess,  
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?  
Then soul live thou upon thy servant's loss,  
And let that pine to aggrivate thy store,  
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross:  
Within be fed, without be rich no more.  
So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,  
And death once dead, there's no more dying then.    

Immoderate Passion.  

MY love is as a fever longing still,  
For that which longer nurseth the disease,  
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,  
Th'uncertain sickly appetite to please:  
My reason the physician to my love,  
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept  
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,  
Desire is death, which physic did except.  
Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,  
And frantic mad with evermore unrest,  
My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are,  
At random from the truth vainly expressed.  
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,  
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.    

love's powerful subtlety.  

O Me! what eyes hath love put in my head,  
Which have no correspondence with true sight,  
Or if they have, where is my judgement fled,  
That censures falsely what they see aright?  
If that be fair where on my false eyes dote,  
What mean●s the world to say it is not so?  
If it be not, than love doth well denote,  
Loves eye is not so true as all men's: no  
How can it? Oh how can love's eye be true,  
That is so vexed with watching and with tears?  
No marvel then though I mistake my view,  
The sun itself sees not, till heaven clears.  
O cunning love, with tears thou keep'st me blind,  
lest eyes well seeing thy foul faults should find.  
Canst thou O cruel, say I love thee not,  
When I against myself with thee partake:  
Do I not think on thee when I forgot  
Am of myself, all tyrant for thy sake?  
Who hateth thee, that I do call my friend,  
On whom frounest thou that I do faun upon.  
Nay if thou lowrst on me, do I not spend  
Revenge upon myself with present moan,  
What merit do I in myself respect,  
That is so proud thy service to despise,  
When all my best doth worship thy defect,  
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes.  
But love hate on for now I know thy mind,  
Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind,  
Oh from what power hast thou this powerful might,  
With insufficiency my heart to sway,  
To make me give the lie to my true sight,  
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?  
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,  
That in the very refuse of thy deeds,  
There is such strength and warrantise of skill,  
That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds?  
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more,  
The more I hear and see just cause of hate,  
Oh though I love what others do abhor,  
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state.  
If thy unworthiness raised love in me.  
More worthy I to be beloved of thee.    

Retaliation.  

SO oft have I invoked thee for my Muse,  
And sound such fair assistance in my verse,  
As every Al●en Pen hath got my use,  
And under thee their poe●ie disperse.  
Thine eyes that taught the dumb on high to sing,  
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly,  
Have added feathers to the learneds' wing,  
And given grace a double majesty.  
Yet be most proud of that which I compile,  
Whose influence is thine, and borne of thee,  
In others works thou dost but mend the stile,  
And Arts with thy sweet graces graced be.  
But thou art all my Art, and dost advance  
As high as learning, my rude ignorance,  
Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,  
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,  
But now my gracious numbers are decayed,  
And my sick Muse doth give another place.  
I grant (sweet love) thy lovely argument  
Deserves the travel of a worthier pen,  
Yet what of thee thy Poet doth invent,  
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again,  
He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word.  
From thy behaviour, beauty doth he give  
And found it in thy theeke: he can afford  
No praise to thee, but what in thee doth live.  
Then thank him not for that Which he doth say,  
Since what he owes thee, thou thyself dost pay.    

Sun Set.  

THat time of year thou Mayst in me behold.  
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang  
upon those boughs which shake against the cold  
Bare ruined quires, where late the sweet birds sang.  
In me thou seest the twi-lights of such day,  
As after sunset fadeth in the West,  
Which by and by black night doth take away,  
Death's second self that seals up all in rest.  
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,  
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,  
As the death bed whereon it must expire,  
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.  
'tis thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong.  
To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.  
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties were,  
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste,  
The vacant leaves thy minds imprint will bear,  
And of this book, this learning Mayst thou taste.  
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,  
Of mouthed graves will give the memory,  
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth Mayst know,  
Times thievish progress to eternity,  
Look what thy memory cannot contain,  
Commit to these waste blacks, and thou shalt find,  
Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,  
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.  
These offices so oft as thou wile look.  
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy book.    

A monument to Fame.  

NOt mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul,  
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,  
Can yet the lease of my true love control  
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom.  
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured  
And the sad Augurs mock their own presage,  
Incertainties now crown themselves assured,  
And peace proclaims ●lives of endless age.  
Now with the drops of this most balmy time,  
My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes,  
Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme,  
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes.  
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,  
When tyrant's crests and tombs of brass are spent.  
What's in the brain that ink may character,  
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit,  
What's new to speak, what now to register,  
That may express my love, or thy dear merit?  
Nothing sweet-love, but yet like prayers divine,  
I must each day say o'er the very same,  
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,  
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.  
So that eternal love in loves fresh case,  
Weighs not the dust and injuries of age,  
Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place,  
But makes antiquity for aye his page,  
Ending the first conceit of love there bred,  
Where time and outward form would show it dead.    

Perjury.  

LOve is too young to know what conscience is,  
Yet who knows not conscience is borne of love,  
Then gentle cheater urge not my amiss,  
lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove.  
For thou betraying me, I do betray  
My nobler part to my gross body's treason,  
My soul doth tell my body that he may,  
Triumph in love, flesh stays no farther reason,  
But rising at thy name doth point out thee,  
As his triumphant prize, proud of this pride,  
He is contented thy poor drudge to be  
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.  
No want of conscience hold it that I call,  
Her love, for whose dear love I rise and fall.  
In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn,  
But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing,  
In act thy bed-vow brook and new faith torn,  
In vowing new hate after new love bearing:  
But why of two oaths breach do I accuse thee,  
When I break twenty: I am perjured most,  
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee:  
And all my honest faith in thee is lost.  
For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness:  
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,  
And to enlighten thee gave eyes to blindness,  
Or made them swear against the thing they see.  
For I have sworn thee fair: more perjured eye,  
To swear against the truth so foul a lie.    

The Tale of Shafalus and Procris.  

BEneath Hymetus hill well clothed with flowers,  
A holy Well her soft springs gently powers,  
Where stands a copse, in which the wood-Nymphs shrove,  
(No wood) it rather seems a slender Grove.  
The humble shrubs and bushes hide the grass,  
Here laurel, Rosemary, here Myrtill was.  
Here grew thick Box, and Tam'rix, that excels,  
And made a mere confusion of sweet smells:  
The Triffoly, the Pine, and on this Heath  
Stands many a plant that feels cool Zephirs breath.  
Here the young Shafalus tired in the chase,  
Used his repofe and rest alone t'embrace,  
And where he sat, these words he would repeat.  
Come air, sweet air, come cool my heat:  
Come gentle air, I never will forsake thee,  
I'll hug thee thus, and in my bosom take thee.  
Some double duteous tell-tale happed to hear this,  
And to his jealous wife doth straightway bear this.  
Which Procris hearing, and with all the Name  
Of Aure, (Sweet air) which he did oft proclaim,  
She stands confounded, and amazed with grief,  
Be giving this fond tale too sound belief.  
And looks as do the trees by Winter nipped,  
Whom Frost and cold, of fruit and leaves half stripped,  
She bends like cotveile, when too rank it grows,  
Or when the ripe fruits clog the Quince tree bows:  
But when she comes t'her self, she tears  
Her Garments, her eyes, her cheeks, and hairs,  
And then she starts, and to her feet applies her,  
Then to the Woods (Stark Wood) in rage she hies her,  
Approaching somewhat near her servants they  
By her appointment in a valley stay,  
Whilst she alone with creeping paces steals  
To take the strumpet whom her Lord conceale●.  
What mean'st thou Procris in these Groves to hide thee?  
What rage of love doth to this madness guide thee?  
Thou hopest the air he calls, in all her bravery  
Will straight approach, and thou shalt see their knavery?  
And now again it irks her to be there,  
For such a killing sight her heart will tear.  
No truce can with her troubled thoughts dispense,  
She would not now be there, nor yet be thence:  
Behold the place: her jealous mind foretells,  
Here do they use to meet, and nowhere else:  
The grass is laid, and see their true impression.  
Even here they lay: I, here was their transgression.  
A body's print she saw, it was his seat,  
Which makes her faint heart 'gainst her ribs to beat,  
Phoebas the lofty Eastern Hill had scald,  
And all moist vapours from the earth exhaled:  
Now in his noon-ride point he shineth bright,  
It was the middle hour, twixt noon and night:  
Behold young Shafalus draws to the place,  
And with the fountain water sprinkes his face,  
Procris is hid, upon the grass he lies,  
And come sweet Zephir, Come sweet air he cries.  
She sees her error now from where he stood,  
Her mind returns to her, and her fresh blood,  
Among the Shrubs and Briers she moves and rustles,  
And the injurious boughs away she justels,  
Intending, as he lay there to repose him,  
Nimbly to run, and in her arms enclose him:  
He quickly casts his eye upon the bush,  
Thinking therein some savage beast did rush,  
His bow he bends, and a keen shaft he draws,  
Unhappy man, what dost thou? Stay and pause.  
It is no Bruit beast thou wouldst reave of life;  
(Oh man unhappy) thou hast slain thy wife?  
Oh Heaven she cries, Oh help me I am slain,  
Still doth thy Arrow in my wound remain,  
Yet though by timeless Fate my bones here lie,  
It glads me most, that I, no cuck-quean die:  
Her breath (thus in the arms she most affected,)  
She breathes into the air (before suspected  
The whilst he lifts her body from the ground,  
And with his tears doth wash her bleeding wound.    

Cupid's treachery.  

Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep,  
A maid of Dyan● this advantage found,  
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep  
In a cold valley-d of that ground:  
Which borrowed from this holy fire of love,  
A dateless lively heat still to endure,  
And grew a seething bath which yet men prove,  
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure:  
But at my Mistress eye loves brand new fired,  
Thy boy for trial needs would touch my breast,  
I sick with all the help of bath desired,  
And thither hied a sad distempered guest.  
But found no cure, the bath for my help lies,  
Where Cupid got new fire; my Mistress eyes.  
The little Love-God lying once a sleep,  
Laid by his side his heart in flaming brand,  
Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,  
Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,  
The fairest vota●y took up that fire,  
Which many Legions of true hearts had warmed,  
And so the general of hot desire,  
Was sleeping by a Virgin hand disarmed.  
This brand she quencled in a cool Well by,  
Which from love's fire took heat perpetual,  
Growing a bath and healthful remedy,  
For men diseased, but I my Mistress thrall,  
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,  
Loves fire heats water, water cools not love.    

That Menelaus was cause of his own wrongs.  

WHen Menelaus from his house is gone,  
Poor Helen is afraid to lie alone;  
And to allay these fears (Lodged in her breast)  
In her warm bosom she receives her guest:  
What madness was this? Menelaus', say  
Thou art abroad whilst in thy house doth stay  
Under the selfsame roof, thy Guest, and Love?  
Madman unto the hawk thou trusts the Dove.  
And who but such a Gull, would give to keep  
Unto the mountain woof full folds of sheep.  
Helen is blameless, so is Paris too,  
And did what thou, or I myself would do.  
The fault is thine, I tell thee to thy face,  
By limiting these Lovers, Time and Place.  
From thee the seeds of all thy wrongs are grown,  
Whose Counsels have they followed, but thine own?  
(Alack) what should they do? Abroad thou art,  
At home thou leavest thy Guest to play thy part:  
To lie alone, the (Poor Queen is afraid,  
In the next room an Amorous stranger stayed.  
Her arms are open to embrace him, he falls in,  
And Paris I acquit thee of the sin.    

And in another place somewhat resembling this.  

Orestes liked, but not loved dearly  
Hermione, till he had lost her clearly:  
Sad Menelaus, why dost thou lament  
Thy late mishap? I prithee be content:  
Thou knowest the amorous Helen fair and sweet,  
And yet without her didst thou sail to Crect,  
And thou wast blithe and merry all the way,  
But when thou saw'st she was the Trojans prey,  
Then wast thou mad for her, and for thy life,  
Thou canst not now one minute want thy wife.  
So stout Achilles, when his lovely Bride  
Brisei●, was disposed to great Atride.  
Nor was he vainly moved: Atrides too  
Offered no morethan he of force must do:  
I should have done as much, to set her free,  
Yet I (heaven knows) am not so wise as he.    

Vulcan was Jupiter's Smith, an excellent workman, on whom the poet's father many rare works, among which, I fi●d this one.  
Mars and Venus.  

THis Tale is blazed through heaven, how once unware  
Venus and Mars were took in Vulcan's snare:  
The god of war doth in his brow discover,  
The perfect and true pattern of a Lover:  
Nor could the goddess Venus be so cruel  
To deny Mars (soft kindness is a jewel  
In any woman, and becomes her well)  
In this the Queen of love doth most excel:  
(Oh heaven) how often have they mocked and flowered  
The smith's polt-foot (whilst nothing he misdoubted)  
Made jests of him and his begrimed trade,  
And his smooged visage, black with coaldust made:  
Mars, tickled with loud laughter, when he saw  
Venus like Vulcan limp, to halt and draw  
One foot behind another, with sweet grace  
To counterfeit his lame uneven pace.  
Their meetings first the Lovers hide with fear,  
From every jealous eye, and captious ear.  
The God of war, and Loves lascivious dame,  
In public view were full of bashful shame;  
But the sun spies, how this sweet pair agree,  
(Oh what bright Phoebus, can be hid from thee?)  
The sun both sees and blabs the sight forthwith.  
And in all post he speeds to tell the Smith:  
(Oh sun) what bad examples dost thou show?  
What thou in secret seest must all men know?  
For silence, ask a bribe from her fair treasure,  
she'll grant thee that shall make thee swell with pleasure.  
The god whose face is smooged with smoke and fire,  
Placeth about their bed a net of wire,  
So quaintly made, that it deceives the eye  
Straight (as he feigns) to Lemnos he must hie?  
The Lovers meet, where he the train hath set,  
And both lie fast catched in a wiry net:  
He calls the gods, the Lovers naked sprawl  
And cannot rise, the Queen of Love shows all.  
Mars chafes, and Venus weeps, neither can flinch,  
Grappled they lie, in vain they kick and winch:  
Their legs are one within another tide,  
Their hands so fast that they can nothing hide:  
Amongst these high Spectators, one by chance  
That saw them naked in this pitfall dance:  
Thus to himself said: If it tedious be  
Good god of war, bestow thy place on me.    

The History how the Mynotaure was begot.  

IDa of cedars, and tall Trees stand full,  
Where fed the glory of the Heard (a Bull  
Snow-white) save twixt his horns one spot there grew,  
Save that one stain, he was of milky lieu.  
This fair Steare did the heifers of the Groves,  
Desire to bear as Prince of all the Droves.  
But most Pasiphae with adulterous breath,  
Envies the wanton heifers to the death.  
'tis said, that for this Bull the doting lass,  
Did use to cr●p young boughs, and mow fresh grass,  
Nor was the Amorous Cretan Queen a feared  
To grow a kind Companion to the Heard:  
Thus through the Champion she is madly borne  
And a wild Bull, to Minos gives the horn,  
'tis not for bravery he can love or loathe thee,  
Then why Pasiphae dost thou richly clothe thee?  
Why shouldst thou thus thy face and looks prepare?  
What makest thou with thy glass ordering thy hair?  
Unless thy glass could make thee seem a Cow,  
But how can horns grow on that tender brow?  
If Minos please thee, no Adulterer se●ke thee,  
Or if thy husband Minos do not like thee,  
But thy lascivious thoughts are still increased,  
Deceive him with a man, not with a beast:  
Thus by the Queen the wild Woods are frequented,  
And leaving the King's bed, she is contented  
To use the Groves, borne by the rage of mind,  
Even as a ship with a full Eastern wind:  
Some of these Strumpet-Heyfers the Queen slew,  
Her smoking Altars their warm bloods imbrue,  
Whilst by the sacrificing Priest she stands,  
And gripes their trembling entrails in her hands;  
At length, the captain of the Heard beguiled,  
With a cow's skin, by curious Art compiled,  
The longing Queen obtains her full desire,  
And in her infant's birth bewrays the Sire.    

This Mynotauren, when he came to growth, was enclosed in the labyrinth, which was made by the curious Arts-master Dedalus, whose Tale likewise we thus pursue.  

WHen Dedalus the labyrinth had built,  
In which t'include the Queen Pasiphae's guilt,  
And that the time was now expired full,  
To enclose the Mynotaure half man, half bull:  
Kneeling he says, just Minos end my moans  
And let my Native soil entomb my bones:  
Or if dread sovereign I deserve no grace,  
Look with a piteous eye on my son's face.  
And grant me leave from whence we are exiled,  
Or pity me, if you deny my child:  
This and much more he speaks, but all in vain,  
The King, both son and Father will detain,  
Which he perceiving says: Now, now, 'tis fit,  
To give the world cause to admire my wit,  
Both Land and Sea, are watched by day and night,  
Nor Land nor Sea lies open to our flight:  
Only the air remains, then let us try  
To cut a passage through the air and fly,  
Jove be suspicious to my enterprise,  
I covet not to mount above the skies:  
But make this refuge, since I can prepare  
No means to fly my Lord but through the air,  
Make me immortal, bring me to the brim  
Of the black Stigia● Water, Styx I'll swim:  
Oh human wit, thou canst invent much ill?  
Thou searchest strange Arts, who would think by skill,  
A heavy man, like a light bird should stray,  
And through the empty Heavens find a way.  
He placeth in just order all his quills,  
Whose bottoms with resolved wax he fills.  
Then binds them with a line, and being fast tied,  
He placeth them like oars on either side,  
The tender Lad the downy Feathers blew,  
And what his Father meant, he nothing knew:  
The wax he fastened, with the strings he played  
Not thinking for his shoulders they were made,  
To whom his Father spoke (and then looked pale)  
With these swift Ships, we to our Land must sail.  
All passages doth cruel Minos stop,  
Only the empty air he still leaves open.  
That way must we; the Land and the rough deep  
Doth Minos bar, the air he cannot keep:  
But in thy way beware thou set no eye  
On the sign Virgo, nor Boetes high:  
Look not the black Orio● in the face  
That shakes his Sword, but just with me keep pace.  
Thy wings are now in fastening, fastening, follow me,  
I will before thee fly as thou shalt see,  
Thy Father mount, or stoop, so I aread thee,  
Make me thy Guard, and safely I will lead thee:  
If we should soar to near great Phoebus' seat,  
The melting wax will not endure the heat,  
Or if we fly too near the Humid Seas,  
Our moistened wings we cannot shake with ease.  
Fly between both, and with the gusts that rise,  
Let thy light body sail amidst the skies,  
And ever as his little son he charms,  
He fits the feathers to his tender arms:  
And shows him how to move his body light,  
As Birds first teach their little young ones flight:  
By this he calls to counsel all his wits,  
And his own wings unto his shoulders fits,  
Being about to rise, he fearful quakes,  
And in this new way his faint body shakes:  
First ere he took his flight, he kised his son,  
Whilst by his cheeks the brinish waters run:  
There was a hillock not so towering tall  
As lofty mountains be, not yet so small  
To be with valleys even, and yet a hill,  
From this thus both attempt their uncouth skill:  
The Father moves his wings, and with respect  
His eyes upon his wandering son reflect:  
They bear a spacious course, and the apt boy  
Fearless of harm, in his new tract doth joy,  
And flies more boldly: Now upon them looks  
The Fishermen, that angle in the brooks,  
And with their eyes cast upward, frighted stand,  
By this is Sa●os Isle on their lift hand,  
Upon the right Lehinthos they forsake,  
As●●p●le● and the Fishie Lake.  
Shady Pachime full of Woods and Groves.  
When the rash youth too bold in venturing, roves;  
Loseth his guide, and takes his flight so high  
That the soft wax against the sun doth fry,  
And the Cords slip that kept the Feathers fast,  
So that his arms have power upon no blast:  
He fearfully from the high clouds looks down,  
Upon the lower heavens, whose curled waves frown  
At his ambitious height, and from the skies  
He see black night and death before his eyes,  
Still melts the wax, his naked arms he shakes,  
And thinking to catch hold, no hold he takes:  
But now the naked Lad down headlong falls,  
And by the way, he Father, Father calls:  
Help Father help, I die, and as he speaks,  
A violent surge his course of language breaks.  
Th'unhappy Father, but no Father now,  
Cries out aloud, son Icarus where art thou?  
Where art thou Icarus, where dost thou fly?  
Icarus where art? When lo he may espy  
The Feathers swim, aloud he doth exclaim,  
The earth his bones, the Sea still bears his name.    

Achilles' his concealment of his Sex in the Court of Lycomedes.  

NOw from another World doth sail with joy,  
A welcome daughter to the King of Troy,  
The whilst the Gracians are already come,  
(Moved with that general wrong 'gainst Islium:)  
Achilles in a smock, his Sex doth smother,  
And lays the blame upon his careful mother,  
What mak'st thou great Achilles, teazing wool.  
When Pallas in a helm should clasp thy Scul●?  
What doth these fingers with fine threads of gold?  
Which were more fit a Warlike Shield to hold.  
Why should that right hand, rock or Tow contain,  
By which the Trojan Hector must be slain?  
Cast off thy loose veils, and thy Armour take,  
And in thy hand the spear of Pellas shake.  
Thus ladylike he with a Lady lay,  
Till what he was, must her belly bewray,  
Yet was she forced (so should we all believe)  
Not to be forced so now her heart would grieve:  
When he should rise from her, still would she cry,  
(For he had armed him, and his rock laid by)  
And with a ●●ft voice spoke: Achilles stay,  
It is too soon to rise, lie down I pray,  
And then the man that forced her, she would kiss,  
What force (Delademea) call you this?    

A lover's Complaint.  

FRom off a hill whose concave womb reworded,  
A plaintfull story from a sistring vale  
My spirits t'attend this double voice accorded,  
And down I laid to list the sad tuned tale,  
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,  
Tearing of Papers, breaking rings a twain,  
Storming her world with sorrows, wind and rain,  
Upon her head a plaited hive of straw,  
Which fortified her visage from the sun,  
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw  
The carcase of a beauty spent and done,  
Time had not sit●●d all that youth begun,  
Nor youth all quit, but spite of heavens fell rage,  
Some beauty peeped, through lettuce of ●ear'd age.  
Oft did she heave her Napkin to her eyen,  
Which on it had conceited characters:  
Laundring the silken figures in the brine,  
That seasoned woe had pelleted in tears,  
And often reading what contents it bears:  
As of en shrieking undistingusht woe,  
In clamours of all size both high and low,  
Sometimes her levelled eyes their carriage ride,  
As they did battery to these spheres intend:  
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied,  
To th'orbed earth; sometimes they do extend,  
Their view right on, anon their gazes lend,  
To every place at once and nowhere fixed,  
The mind and sight distractedly commixed.  
Her hair nor loose nor tied in formal pla●,  
Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;  
For some untucked descended her sheved hat,  
Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside,  
Some in her threeden fillet still did bide,  
And true to bondage would not break from thence,  
Though slackly braided in loose negligence.  
A thousand favours from a maund she drew,  
Of amber, crystal, and of bedded Iet,  
Which one by one she in a river threw,  
Upon whose weeping margin she was set,  
Like usury applying wet to wet,  
Or monarch's hands that lets not bounty fall,  
Where want cries some; but where excess begs all.  
Of folded schedules had she many aone,  
Which she perused, sighed, tore and gave the flood,  
Cracked many a ring of Posied gold and bone,  
Bidding them find their Sepulchers in mud,  
Found yet more letters sadly penned in blood,  
With sleided silk, feat and affectedly  
Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecic.  
These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,  
And often kised, and often gave to tear,  
Cried, O false blood, thou register of lies,  
What unapproved witness dost him bear!  
Ink would have seemed more black and damned here!  
This said in top of rage the lines she rends,  
Big discontent, so breaking their contents.  
A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,  
Sometime a blusterer that the ruffle knew,  
Of Court, of city, and had let go by,  
The swiftest hours observed as they flew,  
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew:  
And privileged by age, desires to know,  
In brief, the grounds and motives of her woe.  
So slides he down upon his grained bat;  
And comely distent ●its he by her side,  
When he again desires her, being sat,  
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:  
If that from him there may be aught applied,  
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,  
'tis promised in the charity of age.  
Father she says, though in me you behold  
The injury of many a blasting hour;  
Let it not tell your judgement I am old,  
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power,  
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,  
Fresh to myself, if I had self applied  
Love to myself, and to no Love beside.  
But woe is me, too early I attended,  
A youthful suit it was to gain my grace;  
O one by natures outwards so commended,  
That maiden's eyes stuck over all his face,  
Love lacked a dwelling, and made him her place,  
And when in his fair parts she did abide,  
She was new lodged and newly Deified.  
His browny locks did hang in crooked curls.  
And every light occasion of the wind  
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls,  
What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find,  
Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind:  
For on his visage was in little drawn,  
What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn.  
Small show of man was yet upon his chin,  
His phoenix down began but to appear  
Like unshorn velvet, on that termelesse skin,  
Whose bare out-braged the web it seemed to wear.  
Yet showed his visage by that cost more dear,  
And nice affections wavering stood in doubt  
If best were as it was, or best without.  
His qualities were beauteous as his form,  
For maiden tongued he was and thereof free;  
Yet if men moved him, was he such a storm,  
As of twixt May and April is to see,  
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.  
His rudeness so with his authorised youth,  
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.  
Well could he ride, and often men would say  
That horse his mettle from his rider takes;  
Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,  
What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes  
And controversy hence a question takes,  
Whether the horse by him became his deed,  
Or he his managed, byth' well-doing steed.  
But quickly on this side the verdict went,  
His real habitude gave life and grace  
To appertanings and to ornament,  
Accomplished in himself not in his case:  
All aids themselves made fairer by their place,  
Can for additions, yet their purposed trim  
Peec'd not his grace but were all graced by him.  
So on the tip of his subduing tongue  
All kind of arguments and questions deep,  
All replication prompt, and reason strong  
For his advantage still did week and sleep,  
To make the weeper laugh, the laughter weep:  
He had the dialect and different skill,  
Catching all passions in his craft of will,  
That he did in the general bosom reign  
Of young, of old, and sexes both inchanred,  
To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain  
In personal duty, following where he haunted,  
Consents bewitched, ere he desire have granted,  
And dialogued for him what he would say,  
Asked their own wills and made their wills obey.  
Many there were that did his picture get  
To serve their eyes and in it put their mind,  
Like fooks that in th' imaginat on set  
The goodly objects which abroad they find  
Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assigned,  
And labouring in more pleasures to bestow them,  
Then the true gouty landlord which doth owe them.  
So many have that never touched his hand  
Sweetly supposed them Mistress of his hear●:  
My woeful self that did in freedom stand,  
And was my own fee simple not (in part)  
What with his art in youth and youth in art  
Threw my affections in his charmed power,  
Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.  
Yet did I not as some my equals did  
Demand of him, nor being desired yielded,  
Finding myself in honour so forbid,  
With safest distance I my honour sheelded,  
Experience for me many bulwarks builded  
Of proofs new bleeding which remained the foil  
Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.  
But ah who ever shuneed by precedent,  
The destined ill she must herself assay,  
Or forced examples 'gainst her own content,  
To put the by-past perils in her way?  
Counsel may stop a while what will not stay:  
For when we rage, advice is often seen  
By blunting us to make our wits more keen.  
Nor gives it satisfaction to our blood,  
That we must curb it upon others proof,  
To be forbid the sweets that seems so good,  
For fear of harms that preach in our behoof;  
O appetite from judgement stand aloof!  
The one a palate hath that needs will taste,  
Though reason weep and cry it is thy last.  
For further I could say this man's untrue,  
And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling,  
Heard where his plants in others Orchards grew,  
Saw how deceits w●re gilded in his smiling,  
Knew vows, were ever brokers to defiling,  
Thought Characters and words merely but art,  
And bastards of his foul adulterate heart.  
And long upon these terms I held my city,  
Till thus he 'gan besiege me: Gentle maid,  
Have of my suffering youth some feeling pity,  
And be not of my holy vows afraid,  
That's to ye sworn to none was ever said,  
For feasts of love I have been called unto  
Till now, did n●re invite nor never vow,  
All my offences that abroad you see  
Are errors of the blood none of the mind:  
Love made them not, with acture they may be,  
Where neither party is nor true nor kind,  
They sought their shame that so their shame did find;  
And so much less of shame in me remains,  
By how much of me their reproach contains.  
Among the many that mine eyes have seen,  
Not one whose ●lame my heart so much as warmed,  
Or my affection put tothth' smallest teen,  
Or any of my leisures ever Charmed,  
Harme have I done to them but ne'er was harmed:  
Kept hearts in liveries, but mine own was free,  
And reigned commanding in his Monarchy.  
Look here what tributes wounded fancies sent me,  
Of palid pearls, and rubies red as blood:  
Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me  
Of grief and blushes, aptly understood  
In bloodless white, and the encrimsoned mood,  
Effects of terror and dear modesty,  
Encamped in hearts but fighting outwardly.  
And lo behold these talents of their hair,  
With twisted mettle amorously empleached,  
I have received from many a several fair,  
Their kind acceptance, weepingly beseeched,  
With th'annexions of fair gems enriched,  
And deep brained sonnets that did amplify,  
Each stones dear Nature, worth and quality.  
The Diamond? why, 'twas beautiful and hard,  
Whereto his envied properties did tend,  
The deep green Emrald, in whose fresh regard,  
Weak sights their sickly radiance do amend.  
The heaven hewed Saphyr and the opal blend,  
With objects manifold; each several stone,  
With wit well blazoned, smiled, or made some m●an.  
Lo all these trophies of affections hot,  
Of pensived and subdued desires the tender,  
Nature hath charged me that I hoored them not,  
But yield them up where I myself must render:  
That is to you my origin and ender:  
For these of force must your oblations be,  
Since I their Altar, you empatron me.  
Oh then advance (of yours) that phraselesse hand,  
Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise,  
Take all these similes to your own command,  
Hollowed with sighs that burning lungs did raise:  
What me your minister? for you obeys,  
Works under you, and to your audit comes,  
Their distract parcels, incombined sums.  
Lo this device was sent me from a Nun,  
Or Sister sanctified of holiest note,  
Which late her noble suit in court did shun,  
Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote,  
For she was sought by spirits of richest cote,  
But kept cold distance, and did thence remove,  
To spend her living in eternal love.  
But oh my sweet What labour is't to leave,  
The thing we have not, Mastering what not strives,  
Playing the play which did no form receive,  
Playing patient sports in unconstrained gives,  
She that her fame so to herself contrives,  
The scars of ●attell scapeth by the flight,  
And makes her absence valiant, not her might,  
Oh pardon me in that my boast is true,  
The accident which brought me to her eye,  
Upon the moment did her force subdue,  
And now she would the caged cloister fly:  
Religious love put out religion's eye:  
Not to be temp●ed would she be enured,  
And now to tempt all liberty procured.  
How mighty then you are, Oh hear me tell,  
The broken bosoms that to me belong,  
Have emptied all their fountains in my well:  
And mine I pour your Ocean all among:  
I strong o'er them, and you o'er me being strong,  
Must for your victory us all congest,  
As compound love to physic your cold breast.  
My parts had power to charm a sacred sun,  
Who disciplined I dieted in grace,  
Believed her eyes, when they t'assail begun,  
All vows and consecrations giving place:  
O most potential love, vow, bond, nor space,  
In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine  
For thou art all, and all things else are thine.  
When thou impressest, what are precepts worth.  
Of stale example? when thou wilt inflame,  
How coldly those impediments stand forth,  
Of wealth, of filial fea●e, law, kindred, fame,  
Loves arms are peace, 'gainst rule, 'gainst sense, 'gainst shame,  
And sweetens in the suffering pang it bears,  
The aloes of all forces, shocks and fears.  
Now all these hearts that do on mine depend,  
Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine,  
And supplicant their sighs to you extend,  
To leave the battery that you make 'gainst mine,  
Lending soft audience, to my sweet design,  
And credent soul, to that strong bonded oath.  
That shall prefer and undertake my troth.  
This said, his watery eyes he did dismount,  
Whose sights till then were ●eavel'd on my face,  
Each cheek a river running from a fount,  
With brinish currant downward flowed apace:  
Oh how the channel to the stream gave grace!  
Who glazed with crystal gate the glowing Roses,  
That flame through water which they h●w encloses.  
Oh father, what a hell of witchcraft lies,  
In the small orb of one particular tear?  
But with the inundation of the eyes:  
What rocky heart to water will not wear?  
What breast so cold that is not warmed here,  
Or cleft effect, cold modesty, hot wrath:  
Both fire from hence, and chill extincture hath?  
For lo his passion but an art of craft,  
Even there resolved my reason into tears,  
There my white stole of chastire I daft,  
Shaken of my sober guards, and civil fears,  
Appear to him, as he to me appears:  
All melting, though our drops this difference bore,  
His poisoned me, and mine did him restore.  
In him a plenitude of subtle matter,  
Applied to Cautles, all strange forms receives,  
Of burning blushes, or of weeping water,  
Or sounding paleness, and he takes and leaves,  
In either's aptness as it best deceives:  
To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes,  
Or to turn white and sound at tragic shows.  
That not a heart which in his level came,  
Could scape the hail of his all hurting aim,  
Showing fair Nature is both kind and tame:  
And veiled in them did win whom he would maim,  
Against the thing he sought he would exclaim,  
When he most burnt in heart-wished luxury,  
He preached pure maid, and praised cold chastity.  
Thus merely with the garment of a grace,  
The naked and concealed fiend he covered,  
That th'unexperient gave the tempter place,  
Which like a Cherubin above them hovered,  
Who young and simple would not be so lovered.  
ay me I fell, and yet do question make,  
What I should do again for such a sake.  
Oh that infected moisture of his eye,  
O that false fire which in his cheek so glowed:  
Oh that forced thunder from his he art did fly,  
O that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed,  
O all that borrowed motion seeming owed,  
Would yet again betray the fore-betraied,  
And new pervert a reconciled maid.    

The amorous Epistle of Paris to Hellen.  

HEalth unto Leda's daughter Priam's son,  
Sends in these lines, whose health cannot be won,  
But by your gift, in whose power it may lie,  
To make me whole or sick; to live or die:  
Shall I then speak? or doth my flame appear,  
Plain without Index? Oh, 'tis that I fear:  
My Love without discovering smile takes place,  
And more than I could wish shines in my face.  
When I could rather in my thoughts desire,  
To hide the smoke, till time display the fire:  
Time that can make the fire of Love shine clear,  
Untroubled with the misty smoke of fear:  
But I dissemble it, for who I pray,  
Can fire conceal, that will itself betray?  
Yet if you look, I should affirm that plain  
In words, which in my countenance I maintain:  
I burn, I burn, my faults I have confessed,  
My words bear witness how my looks transgressed:  
Oh pardon me that have confessed my error,  
Cast not upon my lines a look of terror,  
But as your beauty is beyond compare,  
Suit unto that your looks, (oh you most fair,)  
That you my letter have received by this  
The supposition glads me, and I wish,  
By hope encouraged, hope that makes me strong,  
You will receive me in some sort ere long.  
I ask no more than what the Queen of beauty  
Hath promised me, for you are mine by duty.  
By her I claim you, you for me were made,  
And she it was my journey did persuade:  
Nor Lady think your beauty vainly sought,  
I by divine instinct was hither brought,  
And to this enterprise the heavenly powers,  
Have given consent, the gods proclaim me your●;  
I aim at wonders, for I covet you,  
Yet pardon me, I ask but what's my due:  
Venus herself my journey hither led,  
And gives you freely to my promised bed.  
Under her safe conduct the seas I passed,  
Till I arrived upon these coasts at last:  
Shipping myself from the Sygean shore,  
Whence unto these Confines my course I bore:  
She made the Surges gentle, the winds fair,  
Nor marvel whence these calms proceeded are.  
Needs must she power upon the salt-Seales have,  
That was seaborn, created from a wave.  
Still may she stand in her ability,  
And as she made the seas with much facility,  
To be through sailed, so may she calm my heat,  
And bear my thoughts to their desired seat:  
My flames I found not Here, no, I protest,  
I brought them with me closed in my breast.  
Myself transported them without Attorney,  
Love was the Motive to my tedious journey.  
Not blustering Winter when he triumpheed most,  
Nor any error drove me to this Coast:  
Not led by fortune where the rough winds please,  
Nor merchant like for gaine crossed I the Seas:  
fullness of wealth in all my fleet I see,  
I am rich in all things, save in wanting thee.  
No spoil of petty Nations my Ship seeks,  
Nor Land I as a spy among the greeks,  
What need we? See of all things we have store.  
Compared with Troy (alas your Greece is poor.  
For thee I come, thy fame hath thus far driven me,  
Whom golden Venus hath by promise given me;  
I wished thee ere I knew thee, long ago,  
Before these eyes dwelled on this glorious show:  
I saw thee in my thoughts, know beauteous Dame,  
I first beheld you with the eyes of fame,  
Nor marvel Lady I was stroke so far,  
Thus Darts or arrows sent from bows of war●e  
Wound a great distance off; so was I hit  
With a deep smarting wound that rankles yet,  
For so it pleased the Fates, whom least you blame,  
I'll tell a true Tale to confirm the same:  
When in my mother's womb full ripe I lay,  
Ready the first hour to behold the day,  
And she at point to be delivered straight,  
And to unlade her of her royal freight,  
My birth-hour was delayed, and that sad night  
A fearful vision did the Queen affright:  
In a son's stead to please the aged Sire,  
She dreamt she had brought forth a Brand of fire,  
Frighted she rises, and to Priam goes.  
To the old King this ominous dream she shows:  
He to the Priest, the Priest doth this return,  
That the child borne shall stately Islium burn:  
Better than he was ware the Prophet guest,  
For lo a kindled Brand-flames in the my breast,  
To prevent Fate a Peasant, I was held,  
Till my fair shape all other swains excelled,  
And gave the doubtful world assurance good,  
Your Paris was derived from royal blood.  
Amid the Idean Fields there is a place,  
Remote, full of high trees, which hide the face,  
Of the green mantled Earth, wherein thick rows,  
The oak, the Elm, the Pine, the Pitch-tree grows:  
Here never yet did browse the wanton Ewe,  
Nor from this plot the slow ox lick the dew;  
The savage goat that feeds among the rocks,  
Hath not grazed here, nor any of their flocks.  
Hence the Dardanian walls I might espy,  
The lofty Towers of Islium reared high;  
Hence I the seas might from the firm land see,  
Which to behold, I leaned me to a Tree:  
Believe me, for I speak but what is true,  
Down from the skirt with feathered pinions flew,  
The Nephew to great Atlas, and doth stand,  
With golden Caducens in his hand:  
This as the gods to me thought good to show,  
I hold it good that you the same should know.  
Three Goddesses behind young Hermes moye,  
Great Juno, Pallas, and the Queen of Love;  
Who as in pomp and pride of gate they pass,  
Scarce with their weight they bend the tops of grass:  
Amazed I start, and endlong stands my hair,  
When Mayus son thus says, abandon fear;  
Thou courteous swain, that to these groves repairest,  
And freely judge which of these three is fairest:  
And lest I should these curious sentence shun,  
He tells me by love's sentence all is done.  
And to be judge I no way can eschew,  
This having said, up through the air he flew:  
I straight took Heart a-grace, and grew more bold,  
And there their beauties one by one behold.  
Why am I made the judge to give this doom?  
Methinks all three are worthy to overcome:  
To injure two such Beauties, what tongue dare?  
Or prefer one where they be all so fair.  
Now this seems fairest, now again that other,  
Now would I speak, and now my thoughts I smother.  
And yet at leangth the praise of one most sounded,  
And from that one my present Love is grounded:  
The Goddesses out of their earnest care,  
And pride of beauty to beheld most fair,  
Seek with large arms, and gifts of wondrous price,  
To their own thoughts my censure to en●ice:  
Juno the wife of Jove doth first enchant me,  
To judge her fairest, she a crown will grant me.  
Pallas her Daughter, next doth undertake me,  
Give her the prize, and valiant she will make me.  
I straight devise which can most pleasure bring,  
To be a valiant soldier, or a King:  
Last Venus smiling came with such a grace,  
As if she swayed an Empire in her face.  
Let not (said she) these gifts the conquest bear,  
Combats and kingdoms are both fraught with fear.  
I'll give thee what thou lovest best, (lovely swain,)  
The fairest Saint that doth on earth remain  
Shall be thine own, make thou the Conquest mine;  
Fair Leda's fairest Daughter shall be thine.  
This said, when with myself I had devised,  
And her rich gift and beauty jointly prised:  
Venus' victor, o'er the rest is placed,  
Juno and Pallas leave the Mount disgraced,  
Mean time my Fates a prosperous course had run,  
And by known signs King Priam called me son:  
The day of my restoring is kept holy  
Among the saints-days, consecrated solely,  
To my remembrance, being a day of joy,  
For ever in the calendars of Troy.  
As I wish you I have been wished by others,  
The fairest maids by me would have been Mothers,  
Of all my favours I bestowed not any,  
You only may enjoy the Loves of many:  
Nor by the Daughters of great Dukes and Kings  
Have I alone been sought, whose marriage Rings,  
I have turned back, but by a strain more high,  
By Nymphs and P●airies, such as never die.  
No sooner were you promised as my due,  
But I (all hated) to remember you:  
Waking, I saw your Image, if I dreamt,  
Your beauteous figure still appeared to tempt,  
And urge this voyage, Till your face excelling,  
These eyes beheld, my dreams were all of Hellen.  
Imagine how your face should now incite me,  
Being seen, that unseen did so much delight me.  
If I was scorched so far off from the fire,  
How am I burnt to Cinders thus much nigher:  
Nor could I longer owe myself this treasure,  
But through the Ocean I must search my pleasure,  
The Phrygyan Hatches to the roots are put  
Of the Idean Pines, (a sunder cut)  
The Wood-land mountain yielded me large fees,  
Being despoiled of all her tallest Trees,  
From whence we have squared out unnumbered beams,  
That must be washed within the Marine streams:  
The grounded oaks are bowed, though stiff as steel,  
And to the tough Ribs is the bending keel  
Woven by shipwrights craft, than the mainmast,  
A cross whole middle is the sail-yard placed.  
Tackles and sails, and next you may discern,  
Our painted Gods upon the hooked stern:  
The God that bear●s me on my happy way,  
And is my guide, is Cupid: Now the day  
In which the last stroke of the Hammer's heard  
Within our Navy, in the East appeared,  
And I must now launch forth; (so the Fates please)  
To seek adventures in the Eagean Seas.  
My father and my mother move delay,  
And by entreaties would enforce my stay:  
They hang about my neck, and with their tears,  
Woo me defer my journey: but their fears  
Can have no power to keep me from thy sight:  
And now Cassandra full of sad affright,  
Will lose dishevelled trammels, madly skips,  
Just in the way betwixt me and my Ships.  
Oh, whether wilt thou head long run, she cries?  
Thou bearest fire with thee, whose smoke up-flies  
Unto the heavens (Oh Jove) thou little fearest,  
What quenchless flames thou through the water bearest;  
Cassandra was too true a prophetess,  
Her quenchless flames she spoke of (I confess,)  
My hot desires burn in my breast so fast,  
That no red Furnace hotter flames can cast.  
I pass the city gates, my bark I boo●'d,  
The favourable winds calm gales afford.  
And fill my sails, unto your Land I steer.  
For whether else (his course) should Paris bear:  
Your husband entertains me as his guest,  
And all this happeneth by the god's behest:  
He shows me all his Pastures, parks, and Fields,  
And every rare thing Lacedaemon yields,  
He holds himself much pleased with my being,  
And nothing hides, that he esteems worth seeing.  
I am on fire, till I behold your face,  
Of all Achayas' kingdom, the sole-grace.  
All other curious Objects I defy,  
Nothing but Helen can content mine eye,  
Whom when I saw, I stood transformed with wonder,  
Senseless, as one stroke dead by Jove's sharp Thunder:  
As I revive, my eyes I roll and turn,  
Whilst my flamed thoughts with hotter fancies burn:  
Even so (as I remember,) looked Loves Queen,  
When she was last in Phrygian Ida seen,  
Unto which place by Fortune I was trained,  
Whereby my censure she the Conquest gained:  
But had you made a fourth in that contention,  
Of Venus' beauty, there had been no mention:  
Helen assuredly had borne from all,  
The prize of beauty, the bright golden Ball.  
Only of you may this your kingdom boast,  
By you it is renowned in every Coast:  
Rumor hath everywhere your beauty blazed,  
In what remote clime is not Helen praised?  
From the bright Eastern Sun uprise, inquire,  
Even to his downfall where he stakes his fire,  
There lives not any of your Sex that dare,  
Contend with you that are proclaimed so fair,  
Trust me, for truth I speak: Nay what's most truen,  
Too sparingly the world hath spoke of you:  
Fame that hath undertook your name to blaze,  
Played but the envious Housewife in your praise;  
More than report could promise, or fame blazon,  
Are these Divine perfections that I gaze on.  
These were the same that made Duke Theseus lavish,  
Who in thy prime and Nonage did thee ravish;  
A worthy Rape for such a worthy Man,  
Thrice happy Ravisher, to seize thee then,  
When thou wert stripped stark naked to the skin,  
(A sight of force to make the gods to sin:)  
Such is your Countries Guise at seasons when,  
With naked Ladies they mixed naked Men.  
That he did steal thee from thy Friends, I praise him,  
And for that deed, I to the Heavens will raise him:  
That he returned thee back, by Jove I wonder,  
Had I been Theseus, he that should asunder,  
Have parted us, or snatched thee from my bed,  
First from my shoulders should have pared my head.  
So rich a purchase, such a glorious pray:  
Should constantly have been detained for aye.  
Could these my strong arms possibly unclasp,  
Whilst in their amorous folds they Helen grasp,  
Neither by free constraint nor by free giving,  
Could you depart that compass, and I living:  
But if by rough enforce I must restore you,  
Some fruits of love, (which I so long have bore you,)  
I first would reap, and some sweet favour gain,  
That all my suit were not bestowed in vain:  
Either with me you shall abide and stay,  
Or for your pass your maiden head should pay.  
Or say, I sp●r'd you that, yet would I try  
What other favour, I could else come b●,  
All that belongs to love, I would not miss,  
You should not let me both to clip and ●isse.  
Give me your heart fair Queen, my heart you owe,  
And what my resolution is you know:  
Till the last fire my breathless body take,  
The fire within my breast can never slake.  
Before large kingdoms I preferred your face,  
And ●unoes love, and potent gifts disgrace,  
To fold you in my amorous arms I chused,  
And Pallas virtues scornful, refused.  
When they with Venus in the hill of Ide,  
Made me the judge their beau●ies to decide;  
Nor do I yet repent me, having took,  
Beauty, and strength, and sceptered rule forsook.  
Methinks I chused the best, (nor think it strange)  
I still persist, and never mean to change;  
Only that my employment be not vain,  
Oh you more worth than any empire's gain.  
Let me entreat, lest you my birth should scorn,  
Or parentage: know I am royal borne.  
By marrying me, you shall not wrong you State,  
Nor be a wife to one degenerate.  
Search the Records where we did first begin,  
And you shall find the pleiads of our Kin:  
Nay Jove himself all others to for bear,  
That in our stock renowned Princes were:  
My father of all Asia rains sole King,  
Whose boundless Coast scarce any feathered wing,  
Can give a girdle to, a happier Land,  
A neighbour to the Ocean cannot stand:  
There in a narrow compass you may see,  
Cities and Towers, more than may numbered be,  
The houses guilt, rich Temples that excel,  
And you will say I near the great Gods dwell.  
You shall behold high Ilium's lofty Towers,  
And Troy's brave walls built by immortal powers,  
But made by Phoebus the great god of fire,  
And by the touch of his melodious liar,  
If we have people to inhabit, when  
The sad earth groans to bear such troops of men  
Judge Helen, Likewise when you come to Land,  
The Asian women shall admiring stand,  
Saluting thee with welcome, more and less,  
In pressing throngs and numbers, numberless:  
More than our Courts can hold of you (most fair)  
You to yourself will say, alas, how baire,  
And poor Achaya is, when with great pleasure,  
You see each house contain a city's Treasure.  
Mistake me not, I Sparta do not scorn,  
I hold the Land blessed where my love was borne,  
Though barren else, rich Sparta Helen bore,  
And therefore I that Province must adore;  
Yet is your Land methinks but lean and emty,  
You worthy of a clime that flows with plenty,  
Full Troy I prostrate, it is yours by duty,  
This petty seat becomes not your rich beauty;  
Attendance, preparation, curtsy, State,  
Fit such a heavenly form, on which should wait,  
Cost, Fresh variety, Delicious diet,  
Pleasure, Contentment, and Luxurious riot,  
What Ornaments we use, what fashions feign,  
You may perceive by me and my proud train,  
Thus we attire our men, but with more cost,  
Of gold and pearl, the rich gowns are Imbos●,  
Of our chief Ladies, guests by what you see,  
You may he soon induced to credit me.  
Be tractable fair Spartan, nor contemn  
A Trojan borne, derived from royal ●●emme:  
He was a Trojan and allied to Hector,  
That waits upon Jove's cup, and fills him Nect●r:  
A Trojan did the fair Aurora wed,  
And nightly slept within her roseate bed:  
The Goddesses that ends nigh and enters day,  
From our fair Trojan Coast stole him away,  
Anchises was a Trojan, whom Loves Queen,  
(Making the Trees of Ida a thick screen  
Twixt Heaven and her) oft lay with, view me well  
I am a Trojan too, in Troy I dwell.  
Thy Husband Menelaus hither bring,  
Compare our shapes, our years and every thing,  
I make you Iudge●●e, wrong me if you can,  
You needs must say I am the properer man:  
None of my line hath turned the Sun to blood,  
And robbed his Steeds of their Ambro●iall food:  
My Father grew not from the Caucasse rock,  
Nor shall I graft you in a blood● stock:  
Priam near wronged the guiltless soul, or further,  
Made the Myrean Sea look red with murder:  
Nor thirsteth my great Grand-sire sire in the Lake,  
Of Lethe, Chin deep, yet no thirst can slake:  
Nor after ripened Apples vainly skips,  
Who fly him still, and yet still touch his lips:  
But what of this? If you be so derived,  
You not withstanding are no right deprived.  
You grace your stock, and being so divine,  
Jove is of force compelled into your Line.  
Oh mischief! whilst I vainly speak of this,  
Your Husband all-unworthy of such bliss,  
Enjoys you this long night, enfolds your waste,  
And where he lists may boldly touch and taste.  
So when you sat at Table, many a toy,  
Passeth between you my vexed soul t'annoy,  
At such high feasts I wish my enemy sit,  
Where discontent attends on every bit,  
I never yet was placed at any Feast,  
But oft it irk me that I was your Guest:  
That which offends me most thy rude Lord knows,  
For still his arms about thy neck he throws,  
Which I no sooner spy but I grow mad,  
And hate the man, whose courting makes me sad  
Shall I be plain? I am ready to sink down,  
When I behold him wrap you in his gown,  
When you sit smiling on his amorous knee,  
His fingers press, where my hands itch to be.  
But when he hugs you I am forced to frown,  
The meat I'm eating will by no means down,  
But sticks half way, amidst these discontents,  
I have observed you laugh at my lament●,  
And with a scornful, yet a wanton smile,  
Deride▪ my sighs and groans, oft to beguile  
My passions, and to quench my fiery rage,  
By quaffing healths I'have thought my flame t'assuage.  
But Bacchus full cups make my flames burn higher,  
Add wine to love, and you add fire to fire.  
To shun the sight of many a wanton feat,  
Betwixt your Lord and you, I shift my seat,  
And turn my head, but thinking of your grace,  
Love screws my head to gaze back on your face▪  
What were I best to do? To see you play  
Mads me, and I perforce must turn away,  
And to forbear the place where you abide,  
Would kill me dead, should I but start aside:  
As much as lies in me I strive to bury,  
The shape of Love, in mirth's spite I seem merry.  
But oh, the more I seek it to suppress,  
The more my blabbing looks my love profess.  
You know my Love which I in vain should hide,  
Would God it did appear to none beside,  
Oh Jove how often have I turned my cheek,  
To hide th'apparant tears that passage seek,  
From forth my eyes, and to a corner stepped,  
lest any man should ask wherefore I wept:  
How often have I told you piteous tales,  
Of constant Lovers, and how Love prevails.  
When such great heed to my discourse I took,  
That every accent suited to your look;  
Inforged names myself I represented,  
The Lover so perplexed, and so tormented,  
If you will know? Behold I am the same,  
Paris was meant in that true lover's name:  
As often, that I might the more se●urely,  
Speak loose immodest words, that sound impurely,  
That they offenceless might your sweet ears touch,  
I have lispt them up, like one had drunk too much.  
Once I remember, your loose veil betrayed,  
Your naked skin, and a fair passage made,  
To my ●namored eye, Oh skin much brighter  
Than snow or purest milk, in colour whiter  
Than your fair mother Leda, when Jove graced her,  
And in the shape of Feathered Swan embraced her.  
Whilst as this ravishing sight I stood amazed,  
And without interruption freely gazed,  
The wreathed handle of the bowl I grasped,  
Fell from my hold, my strengthless hand unclasped.  
A Goblet at that time I held by chance,  
And down it fell, for I was in a trance.  
Kiss your fair Daughter, and to her I skip,  
And snatch your kisses from your sweet child's lip.  
Sometimes I throw myself along, and lie.  
Singing lovesongs, and if you cast your eye,  
On my effeminate gesture, I still find,  
Some pretty covered signs to speak my mind;  
And then my earnest suit blu●tly invades,  
Aethra and Climenea your two chief maids,  
But they return me answers full of fear,  
And to my motions lend no further ear.  
Oh that you were the prize of some great strife,  
And he that wins, might claim you for his wife.  
Hyppomenes with swift Atlanta ran,  
And at one course the goal and Lady won,  
Even she, by whom so many suitors perished,  
Was in the bosom of her new Love cheerished.  
So Hercules for Deja●eira strove,  
Brake Athelous horn, and gained his love.  
Had I such liberty, such freedom granted,  
My resolution never could be daunted;  
Yourself should find, and all the world should see,  
Helen (a prize alone) reserved for me,  
There is not left me any means (most fair)  
To Court you now, but by intreats and prayer,  
unless (as it becomes me you think meet,  
That I should prostrate fall, and kiss your feet.  
Oh all the honour that our last age wins,  
Than glory of the two Tindarian Twins,  
Worthy to be Jove's wife, in heaven to reign,  
Were you not Jove's own Daughter, of his strain.  
To the Sygean confines I will carry thee,  
And in the Temple of great Pallas marry thee:  
Or in this Island where I vent my moans,  
I'll beg a tomb for my exiled bones:  
My wound is not a slight race with an arrow,  
But it hath pierced my heart, and burned my marrow.  
This prophecy my Sister oft hath sounded,  
That by an heavenly Dart I should be wounded:  
Oh then forbear (Fair Helen) to oppose you,  
Against the gods, they say I shall not lose you.  
Yield you to their behest, and you shall find,  
The gods to your pititions likewise kind.  
A thousand things at once are in me brain,  
Which that I may essentially complain,  
And not in papers empty all my head,  
Anon at night receive me to your bed.  
Blush you at this! or Lady do you fear,  
To violate the nuptial laws austeare?  
Oh (simple Helen) Foolish I might say,  
What profit reap you to be Chaste I pray?  
Is't possible, that you a world to win,  
Should keep that face, that beauty without sin?  
Rather you most your glorious face exchange,  
For one (Less fair) or else not seem so strange:  
Beauty and Chastity at variance are,  
'tis hard to find one woman chaste and fair.  
Venus will not have beauty over awed,  
High Jove himself stolen pleasures will applaud,  
And by such thievish pastimes we may gather,  
How jove'gainst wedlocks laws, became your father:  
He and your mother Leda both transgressed,  
When you were got she bare a tender breast.  
What glory can you gain Love sweets to smother?  
Or to be counted chaster than your mother?  
Profess strick chastity, when with great joy,  
I lead you as my bride-espoused through Troy:  
Then I inteate you rain your pleasures in,  
I wish thy Paris may be all thy sin.  
If citherea her firm Covenant keep,  
Though I with in your bosom nightly sleep,  
We shall not much misdo, but so offend,  
That we by marriage may our guilt amend.  
Your husband hath himself this business aided,  
And though (not with his tongue) he hath persuaded,  
By all his deeds (as much) lest he should stay,  
Our private meetings, he is far away,  
Of purpose rid unto the farthest West,  
That he might leave his wife unto his guest.  
No fitter time he could have found to visit,  
The Chrisean royal sceptre, and to seize it:  
Oh simple, simple Husband? but he's gone,  
And going, left you this to think upon.  
Fair wife (quoth he) I prithee in my place,  
Regard the Trojan Prince, and do him grace:  
Behold, a witness I against you stand,  
You have been careless of this kind command.  
Count from his first day's journey, never since,  
Did you regard or grace the Trojan Prince;  
What think you of your Husband? that he knows  
The worth and value of the face he owes?  
Who (but a fool) such beauty would endanger,  
Or trust it to the mercy of a Stranger.  
Then (Royal Queen) if neither may entreat,  
My quenchless passion, nor love's raging heat,  
Can win you, we are wooed both to this crime,  
Even by the fit advantage of the time,  
Either to love sweet sport we must agree,  
Or show ourselves to be worse fools than he:  
He took you by the hand the hour he rode,  
And knowing, I with you must make abode,  
Brings you to me, what should I further say,  
It was his mind to give you quite away.  
What meant he else? Then let's be blithe and jolly,  
And make the best use of your husband's folly.  
What should we do? Your husband is far gone,  
And this cold night (Poor soul) you lie alone.  
I want a bedfellow, so do we either,  
What lets us then, but that we lie together:  
You slumbering think on me, on you I dream,  
Both our desires are fervent, and extreme.  
Sweet, then appoint the night, why do you stay?  
Oh night, more clearer than the brightest day:  
Then I dare freely speak, protest, and swear,  
And of my vows the gods shall record bear.  
Then will I seal the contract, and the strife,  
From that day forward, we are man and wife:  
Then questionless I shall so far persuade,  
That you with me shall Troy's rich Coast invade,  
And with your Phrygian guest at last agree,  
Our potent kingdom and rich crown to see.  
But if you (blushing) fear the vulgar bruit,  
That says, you follow me, to me make suit,  
Fear it not Helen; I'll so work with Fame,  
I will (alone) be guilty of all blame.  
Duke Theseus was my instance, and so were  
Your brother's Lady, Can I come more near  
To ensample my attempts by? Theseus haled  
Helen perforce: your brothers they prevailed;  
With the Leucippian Sisters, now from these,  
I'll count myself the fourth (if Helen please.)  
Our Trojan Navy rides upon the Coast,  
Rigged, armed, and manned, and I can proudly boast,  
The banks are high, why do you longer stay?  
The winds and oars are ready to make way.  
You shall be like a high majestic Queen,  
Led through the Dardan city, and be seen,  
By millions, who your State having commended,  
Will (Wondering) swear, some goddess is descended.  
Where e'er you walk the Priests shall incense burn,  
No way you shall your eye or body turn  
But sacrificed beasts the ground shall beat,  
And bright religious fires the welkin heat,  
My father, mother, brother, sisters: all  
Islium and Troy in pomp majestical,  
Shall with rich gifts present you (but alas)  
Not the least part (so far they do surpass)  
Can my Epistle speak, you may behold  
More than my words or writings can unfold.  
Nor fear the bruit of war, or threatning steel,  
When we are fled: to dog us at the heel:  
Or that all Graecia will their powers unite,  
Of many ravished, can you one recite,  
Whom war repurchased? these be idle fears,  
Rough blustering, Boreas fair Orithea bears,  
Unto the land of Thrace, yet Thrace still free,  
And Athens raised no rude Hostility.  
In winged Pegasus did Jason sail,  
And from great Colchos he Medea stale:  
Yet Thessaly you see can show no scar,  
Of former wounds in the Thessalian war:  
He that first ravished you: In such a fleet,  
As ours is, Ariadne brought from Crete:  
Yet Minos and Duke Theseus were agreed,  
About that quarrel, not abreast did bleed.  
Less is the danger (trust me) than the fear,  
That in these vain and idle doubts appear.  
But say rude war should be proclaimed at length,  
Know, I am valiant, and have sinewy strength.  
The weapons that I use are apt to kill,  
Asia besides, more spacious fields can fill,  
With armed men than Greece, amongst us are  
More perfect soldiers, more beasts apt for war:  
Nor can thy husband Menelaus be  
Of any high spirit and Magnanimity,  
Or so well proved in arms: for Helen I,  
Being but a Lad have made my enemies fly.  
Regained the prey from out the hands of thieves,  
Who had desploid our herds, and stolen our Beeves.  
By such adventures I my name obtained,  
(Being but a Lad) the conquest I have gained,  
Of young men in their prime, who much could do,  
Deiphobus, Ilione as to.  
I have o'ercome in many sharp contentions,  
Nor think these are my vain and forged inventions:  
Or that I only hand to hand can fight,  
My arrows when I please shall touch the white.  
I am expert in the quarry and the Bow,  
You cannot boast your he artless husband so.  
Had you the power in all things to supply me,  
And should you nothing in the world deny me,  
To give me such a Hector to my brother,  
You could not: the earth bears not such another:  
By him alone all Asia is well manned,  
He like an enemy against Greece shall stand;  
Opposed to your best fortunes, wherefore strive you,  
You do not know his valour that must wive you.  
Or what hid worth is in me but at length,  
You will confess when you have proved my strength.  
Thus either war shall still our steps pursue,  
Or Greece shall fall in Troy's all-conquering view:  
Nor would I fear for such a royal wife,  
To set the universal world at strife:  
To gain rich Prizes men will venture far,  
The hope of purchase makes us bold in war.  
If all the world about you should contend,  
Your name would be eternised without end,  
Only be bold, and fearless may we sail  
Into my country, with a prosperous gale,  
If the gods grant me my expected day,  
I to the full shall all these Covenants pay.    

Helen to Paris.  

NO sooner came mine eye unto the sight,  
Of thy rude Lines, but I must needs rewrite.  
Dar'st thou (Oh shameless) in such heinous wise,  
The laws of Hospitality despise?  
And being a stranger, from thy country's reach,  
Solicit a chaste wife to wedlock's breach?  
Was it for this, our free Tenarian Port,  
Received thee and thy train, in friendly sort?  
And when great Neptune nothing could appease,  
Gave thee safe harbour from the stormy Seas?  
Was it for this, our kingdom's arms spread wide,  
To entertain thee from the water's side?  
Yet thou of foreign soil remote from hence,  
A stranger, coming we scarce knew from whence.  
Is perjured wrong the recompense of right?  
Is all our friendship guerdoned with despite?  
I doubt me then, whether in our Court doth tarry,  
A friendly guest, or a fierce adversary.  
Nor blame me, for if justly you consider,  
And these presumptions well compare together,  
So simple my complaint will not appear,  
But you yourself must needs excuse my fear.  
Well, hold me simple, much it matters not,  
Whilst I preserve my chaste name far from spot,  
For when I seem touched with a bashful shame,  
It shows how highly I regard my Fame.  
For when I seem sad, my countenance is not feigned,  
And when I lower, my look is unconstrained.  
But say my brow be cloudy, my name's cleree,  
And reverently you shall of Helen here.  
No man from me adulterate spoils can win,  
For to this hour I have sported without sin,  
Which makes me in my heart the more to wonder,  
What hope you have in time to bring me under.  
Or from mine eye what comfort thou canst gather,  
To pity thee, and not despise thee rather.  
Because once Theseus hurried me from hence,  
And did to me a kind of violence,  
Follows it therefore, I am of such price,  
That ravished once, I should be ravished twice.  
Was it my fault, because I strived in vain,  
And wanted strength his fury to restrame;  
He flattered and spoke fair, I struggled still,  
And what he got was much against my will.  
Of all his toil, he reaped no wished fruit,  
For with my wrangling I withstood his suit,  
At length, I was restored, untouched and clear,  
In all my Rape, I suffered nought (save fear)  
A f●w untoward kisses, he (God wot)  
Of further favours, he could never boast:  
Dry, without relish, by much striving got;  
And them with much ado, and to his cost;  
I doubt your purpose aims at greater blisses,  
And hardly would alone be pleased with kisses.  
Thou hast some further aim, and seek'st to do,  
What (Jove defend) I should consent unto.  
He bear not thy bad mind, but did restore me,  
Unblemished, to the place from whence he bore me,  
The youth was bashful, and thy boldness lacked,  
And 'tis well known, repented his bold fact.  
Theseus repented, so should Paris do,  
Succeed in Love, and in repentance too;  
Nor am I angry: who can angry be  
With him that loves her? If your heart agree,  
With your kind words, your suit I could applaud:  
So I were sure your lines were void of fraud.  
I cast not these strange doubts or this dispense,  
Like one that were bere●ft all confidence:  
Nor that I with myself am in disgrace,  
Or do not know the beauty of my face:  
But because too much trust hath damaged such,  
As have believed men in their loves too much.  
And now the general tongue of women saith,  
Men's words are full of Treason, void of faith.  
Let others sin, and hours in pleasures waste,  
'tis rare to find the sober Matron chaste:  
Why, sa● it be that sin prevails with fair ones,  
May not my name be ranked among the rare ones?  
Because my mother Leda was beguiled,  
Must I stray too that am her eldest child?  
I must confess my mother made a rape,  
But Jove beguiled her in a borrowed shape,  
When she (Poor soul) not dreamt of god nor man,  
He trod her like a milk-white feathered Swan:  
She was deceived by error, if I yield  
To your unjust request, nothing can shield  
Me from reproach, I cannot plead concealing,  
'Twas in her, error: 'tis in me plain-dealing:  
She happily erred. He that her honour spilled,  
Had in himself full power to soul the guilt:  
Her error happied me too (I confess)  
If to be Jove's child, be a happiness:  
To omit high Jove, of whom I stand in awe:  
As the great Grandsire to our Father in Law,  
To pass the kin I claim from Tantalus,  
From Pelopet, and from Noble Tyndarus.  
Leda by Jove in shape of Swan beguiled,  
Herself so changed, and by him made with child,  
Proves Jove my father: then you idly strive,  
Your name from Gods and Princes to derive.  
What need you of old Priam make relation?  
Laeomedon or your great Phrygian Nation?  
Say, all be true: What then? He of whom most,  
To be of your alliance you so boast;  
Jove (five degrees at least) from you removed,  
To be the first from me, is plainly proved;  
And though (as I believed well) Troy may stand,  
Powerful by Sea, and full of strength by Land,  
And no Dominion to your state superior,  
I hold our clime nothing to Troy inferior.  
Say, you in riches pass us, or in number  
Of people, whom you boast your streets to cumber,  
Yet yours a barbarous Nation is, I tell you,  
And in that kind, do we of Greece excel you.  
Your rich Epistle doth such gifts present,  
As might the Goddesses themselves content,  
And woo them to your pleasures, but if I  
Should pass the bonds of shame, and tread awry,  
If ever you should put me to my shifts,  
Yourself should move me more than all your gifts:  
Or if I ever shall transgress by stealth,  
It shall be for your sake, not for your wealth;  
But as your gifts I scorn not, so such seem  
Most precious, where the giver we esteem,  
More than your presence, it shall Helen please,  
That you for her have past the stormy Seas,  
That she hath caused your toil, that you respect her,  
And more than all your Trojan Dames affect her.  
But ye're a wag in troth, the notes and signs,  
You make a Table, in the meats and wines;  
I have observed, when I lest seemed to mind them,  
For at the first my curious eye did find them.  
Sometimes (you wanton) your fixed eye advances,  
His brightness against mine, darting sweet glances,  
Out gazing me with such a steadfast look,  
That my dazed eyes their splendour have forsook:  
And then you sigh, and by and by you stretch  
Your amorous arm outright, the bowl to reach  
That next me stands, making excuse to sip,  
Just in the selfsame place that kised my lip.  
How oft have I observed your finger make,  
Tricks and conceited signs, which straight I take?  
How often doth you: brow your smooth thoughts cloak,  
When to (my seeming) it hath almost spoke,  
And still I feared my husband would have spied ye,  
In troth you are to blame, and I must chide ye.  
You are too manifest a Lover (Tush,)  
At such known signs I could not choose but blush,  
And to myself I oft was forced to say,  
This man at nothing shames. Is this (I pray)  
Ought save the truth? oft times upon the board,  
Where Helen was engraven, you the word,  
amorett have underwit, in new spilt wine;  
(Good sooth) at first I could not skan the line,  
Nor understand your meaning: Now (oh spite)  
Myself am now taught, so to read and Write.  
Should I offend, as sin to me is strange,  
These blandishments have power chaste thoughts to change,  
Or if I could be moved to step astray,  
These would provoke me to lascivious play.  
Besides, I must confess, you have a face,  
So admirable rare, so full of grace,  
That it hath power to woo, and to make ceasure,  
Of the most bright chaste beauties to your pleasure:  
Yet had I rather stainelesse keep my Fame,  
Then to a stranger hazard my good name.  
Make me your instance, and forbear the fare,  
Of that which most doth please you, make most spare.  
The greatest virtues of which wise men boast,  
Is to abstain from that which pleaseth most.  
How many gallant Youths (Think you) desire,  
That which you covet? skorched with the selfsame fire?  
Are all the world fools? only Paris wise?  
Or is there none save you have judging eyes?  
No, no, you view no more than others see,  
But you are plainer, and more bold with me.  
You are more earnest to pursue your game.  
I yield you not more knowledge, but less shame.  
I would to God that you had sailed from Troy,  
When my Virginity and bed to enjoy,  
A thousand gallant Princely suitors came:  
Had I beheld young Paris, I proclaine,  
Of all those thousand I had made you chief,  
And Spartan Menelaus to his grief,  
Should to my censure have subscribe and yielded,  
But now (alas) your hopes are weakly builded.  
You covet goods possessed, pleasures fore-tasted,  
Tardy you come, that should before have hasted,  
What you desire, another claims as due,  
As I could wish t'have been espoused to you;  
So let me tell you, since it is my fate,  
I hold me happy in this present state.  
Then cease fair Prince, an idle suit to move,  
Sack not to harm her whom you seem to love:  
In my contented state let me be guided,  
As both my states and fortunes have provided,  
Nor in so vain a quest your spirits toil,  
To seek at my hands an unworthy spoil.  
But see how soon poor Women are deluded,  
Venus herself this covenant hath concluded,  
For in the Idaean valleys you espy,  
Three Goddesses, stripped naked to your eye,  
And when the first had promised you a crown,  
The second Fortitude and wars renown;  
The third b●spake you thus: crown, nor war's pride,  
Will I bequeathe, but Helen to thy Bride:  
I scarce believe those high immortal Creatures,  
Would to your eye expose their naked features,  
Or say the first part of your Tale be pure,  
And meet with truth: the second false I'm sure,  
In which poor I was thought the greatest meed,  
In such a high cause by the Gods decreed.  
I have not of my beauty such opinion,  
T'imagine it presered before Dominion,  
Or fortitude: nor can your words persuade me,  
The greatest gift of all, the goddess made me.  
It is enough to me, men praise my face,  
But from the Gods, I merit no such grace,  
Nor doth the praise you charge me with offend, me,  
If Venus do not enviously commend me.  
But lo I grant you, and imagine true,  
Your free report, claiming your praise as due.  
Who would in pleasing things call Fame a liar,  
But give that credit, which we most desire.  
That we have moved these doubts be not you grieved,  
The greatest wonders are the least believed;  
Know than I first am pleased that Venus ought me  
Such undeserved grace: Next, that you thought me  
The greatest meed: nor sceptre nor wars Fame.  
Did you prefer before poor Helen's name.  
(Hard-heart, 'tis time thou shouldst at last come down:)  
Therefore I am your valour, I your crown.  
Your kindness conquers me do what I can.  
I were hard-hearted, not to love this man:  
Obdurate I was never, and yet coy,  
To favour him whom I can ne'er enjoy.  
What profits it the barren sands to plow,  
And in the furrows our affections sow.  
In the sweet theft of Venus I am rude,  
And know not how my husband to delude;  
Now I these love-lines write, my Pen I vow,  
Is a new office taught, not known till now.  
Happy are they that in this Trade have skill,  
(Alas I am a fool) and shall be still;  
And having till this hour not slept astray,  
Fear in these sports lest I should miss my way.  
The fear (no doubt) is greater than the blame,  
I stand confounded and amazed with shame,  
And with the very thought of what you seek,  
Think every eye fixed on my guilty cheek.  
Nor are these suppositions merely vain,  
The murmuring people whisperingly complain,  
And my maid Aethra hath by listening, slily  
Brought me such news, as touched mine honour highly:  
Wherefore (Dear Lord) dissemble or desist,  
Being over-eyed, we cannot as we list  
Fashion our sports, our love's pure harvest gather,  
But why should you desist? dissemble rather.  
Sport (but in secret) sport where none may see,  
The greater, but not greatest liberty:  
Is limited to our Lascivious play,  
That Menelaus is far hence away.  
My husband about great affairs is posted,  
Leaving his royal guest securely hosted,  
His business was important and material,  
Being employed about a crown imperial:  
And as he now is mounted on his Steed,  
Ready on his long journey to proceed;  
Even as he questions to depart or stay,  
Sweet heart (quoth I) oh be not long away;  
With that he reached me a sweet parting kiss,  
(How loath he was to leave me, guess by this.)  
Farewell fair wife (saith he) bend all thy cares,  
To my domestic business, home affairs.  
But as the thing that I affection best,  
Sweet wife, look well unto my Trojan guest.  
It was no sooner out but with much pain,  
My itching spleen from laughter I restrain,  
Which striving to keep in and bridle still,  
At length I wrung forth these few words (I will.)  
he's on his journey to the Isle of Crete,  
But think not we may therefore safely meet.  
He is so absent, that as present I,  
Am still within his reach, his ear his Eye,  
And though abroad, his power at home commands,  
For know you not Kings have long reaching hands?  
The fame for beauty you besides have given me,  
Into a great exigent hath driven me:  
The more your commendation filled his ear,  
The more just cause my husband hath to fear.  
Nor marvel you the King hath left me so,  
Into remote and foreign Climes to go,  
Much confidence he dares repose in me,  
My carriage, 'haviour, and my modesty,  
My beauty he mistrusts, my heart relies in,  
My face he fears, my Chaste life he affies in.  
To take time now when time is, you persuade me,  
And with his apt fit absence you invade me:  
I would, but fear, nor is my mind well set,  
My will would further, what my fear doth let.  
I have no husband here, and you no wife,  
I love your shape, you mine, dear as your life.  
The nights seem long to such as sleep alone,  
Our letters meet to interchange our moan.  
You judge me beauteous, I esteem you fair,  
Under one roof we Lovers lodged ar●.  
And (let me die) but every thing consider,  
Each thing persuades us we shall lie together.  
Nothing we see molests us, nought we hear,  
And yet my forward will is slack through fear.  
I would to God that what you ill persuade,  
You could as well compel, so I were made,  
Unwilling willing, pleasingly abused,  
So my simplicity might be excus'de.  
Injuries force is oft times wondrous pleasing,  
To such as suffer ease in their diseasing.  
If what I will, you 'gainst my will should do,  
I with such force could be well pleased too.  
But whilst our love is young and in the bud,  
Suffer his infant vigour be withstood.  
A flame new kindled is as easily quenched,  
And sudden sparkles in little drops are drenched:  
A traveller's Love is like himself, unstaid,  
And wanders where he walks, it is not laid  
On any firmer ground, for when we alone  
Think him to us, the wind blows fair, he's gone:  
Witness Hhysiphile, alike betrayed,  
Witness with her the bright Mynoyan maid:  
Nay then yourself, as you yourself have spoken:  
To fair Oenon have your promise broken,  
Since I beheld your face first, my desire  
Hath been, of Trojan Paris to inquire:  
I know you now in every true respect,  
I'll grant you thus much then, say you affect  
Me (whom you term your own.) I'll grow thus far  
Do not the Phagian mariners prepare,  
Their sails and oars, and now whilst we recite,  
Exchange of words about the wished night:  
Say that even now you were prepared to climb  
My long wished bed, just at th'appointed time,  
The wind should alter and blow fair for Troy,  
You must broke off, in midst of all your joy,  
And leave me in the infancy of pleasure,  
A mid my riches, I shall lose my treasure.  
You will forsake the sweets my bed affords,  
Texchange for Cabins, Hatches, and pitched boards,  
Than what a fickle Courtship you commince,  
When, with the first wind, all your Love blows hence.  
But shall I follow you when you are gone,  
And be the grandchild to L●omedon?  
And Islium see whose beauty you proclaim?  
I do not so despise the bruit of Fame.  
That she to whom I am indebt such thanks,  
Should fill the Earth with such adulterate pranks:  
What will Achaia? what will Sparta say?  
What will your Troy report and Asia?  
What may old Priam or his reverent Queen?  
What may your Sisters having Helen seen,  
Or your Dardanidan brothers deem of me?  
Will they not blame my loose inchastity:  
Nay, how can you yourself faithful deem me,  
And not amongst the losest Dames esteem me.  
No stranger shall your Asian Poets come near,  
But he shall fill your guilty soul with fear.  
How often (angry at some small offence)  
Will you thus say; adultress, get thee hence,  
Forgetting you yourself have been the chief  
In my transgression, though not in my grief.  
Consider what it is forgetful Lover,  
To be sins Author, and sins sharp reprover.  
But ere the least of all these ills betide me,  
I wish the earth may in her bosom hide me.  
But I shall all your Phrigyan wealth possess,  
And more than your Epistle can express;  
Gifts, woven gold, embroidery, rich attire,  
Purple and Plate, or what I can desire?  
Yet give me leave, think you all this extends,  
To countervail the loss of my chief friends?  
Whose friendship, or whose aid shall I employ,  
To succour me when I am wronged in Troy.  
Or whether can I, having thus misdone.  
Unto my Father or my Brothers run.  
As much as you to me, false Jason swore,  
Unto Medea, yet from Aeson's door,  
He after did exile her: Now poor heart,  
Where is thy Father that should take thy part?  
Old Aetes or Calciope? thou tookest  
No aid from them, who thou before forsookest.  
Or say thou didst (alas they cannot hear  
Thy sad complaints) yet I no such thing fear,  
No more Medea did, good hopes engage  
Themselves so far, they fail in their presage:  
You see the ships that in the main are tossed,  
And many times by tempests wracked and lost,  
Had at their lancing from the Havens mouth,  
A smooth sea, and a calm gale from the South.  
Besides, the brand your mother dreamt she bare  
The night before your birth, breeds me fresh care,  
It prophecide, ere many years expire,  
Inflamed Troy must burn with Greekish fire,  
As Venus favours you, because she gained,  
A double prize by you; yet the disdained  
And vanquished Goddesses, disgraced so late,  
May bear you hard, I therefore fear their hate:  
Nor make no question, but if I consort you,  
And for a Ravisher our Greece report you:  
War will be waged with Troy, and you shall rue,  
The sword (alas) your conquest shall pursue.  
When Hippodamia at her bride-ale feast,  
Was rudely ravished by her Centaur guest,  
Because the savages the Bride durst cease,  
War grew betwixt them and the Lapythes:  
Or think you Menela●● hath no spleen?  
Or that he hath not power to avenge his teen?  
Or that old Tyndarus this wrong can smother?  
Or the two famous Twins each loved of other.  
So where your valour and rare deeds you boast,  
And warlike spirits in which you triumph most;  
By which you have attain'd'mongst soldier's grace,  
None will believe you that but sees your face,  
Your feature and fair shape, is fitter far  
For amorous Courtships, than remorseless war:  
Let rough hewed soldiers warlike dangers prove,  
'tis pity Paris should do aught save love.  
Hector (whom you so praise) for you may fight,  
I'll find you war to skirmish every night,  
Which shall become you better: were I wise,  
And bold withal, I might obtain the prize,  
In such sweet single Combats, hand to hand,  
'Gainst which no woman that is wise will stand:  
My Champion I'll encounter breast to breast,  
Though I were sure to fall, and be o'repreast.  
In that your private conference entreat me,  
I apprehend you, and you cannot cheat me,  
I know the meaning, durst I yield there to,  
Of what you would confer; what you would do,  
You are too forward, you too far would wade,  
But yet (God knows) your harvests in the blade.  
My tired pen shall here his labour end.  
A guilty sense in thievish lines I send.  
Speak next when your occasion best persuades,  
By Clymenea and Aethra my two maids.    

The Passionate shepherd to his Love.  

LIve with me and be my Love,  
And we will all the pleasures prove  
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,  
And all the craggy mountains yields.  
There will we sit upon the rocks,  
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,  
By shallow Rivers by whose falls  
Melodious birds sing Madrigales.  
There will I make thee a bed of Roses,  
With a thousand fragrant poses,  
A cap of flowers, and a Kirtle  
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.  
A gown made of the finest wool,  
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,  
Fair lined slippers for the cold,  
With buckles of the purest gold.  
A belt of straw and ivy buds,  
With coral clasps and Amber studs,  
And if these pleasures may thee move,  
Then live with me and be my Love.  
The shepherd's swains shall dance and sing,  
For thy delight each May morning;  
If these delights thy mind may move,  
Then live with me and be my love.    

The nymph's reply to the shepherd.  

IF that the world and Love were young,  
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,  
These pretty pleasures might me move,  
To live with thee and be thy Love.  
Time drives the flocks from field to fouled,  
When River rage, and Rocks grow cold,  
And Philomel becometh dumb,  
The rest complains of cares to come.  
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,  
To wayward Winter reckoning yields,  
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,  
Is fancies spring, but sorrows fall.  
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of Roses,  
Thy Cap, thy Kirtle and thy Posies,  
Some break, some wither, some forgotten,  
In folly ripe, in Reason rotten.  
Thy belt of straw and ivy buds,  
Thy Corell clasps and Amber studs,  
All these in me no means can move.  
To come to thee and be thy Love.  
But could youth last, and Love still breed,  
Had joys no date, not age no need,  
Then these delights my mind might move;  
To live with thee and be thy Love.    

Another of the same Nature.  

COme live with me and be my dear,  
And we will revel all the year,  
In plains and groves, on hills and dales,  
Where fragrant air breeds sweetest gales.  
There shall you have the beauteous Pine,  
The cedar and the spreading Vine,  
And all the woods to be a skrene,  
lest Phoebus kiss my summer's Queen.  
The seat for your disport shall be,  
Over some River in a Tree,  
Where silver sands, and pebbles sing,  
Eternal ditties with the Spring.  
There shall you see the Nymphs at play,  
And how the satyrs spend the day,  
The fishes gliding on the sands,  
Offering their bellies to your hands.  
The Birds with heavenly tuned throats,  
Possess woods echoes with sweet notes,  
Which to your senses will impart,  
A music to inflame the heart.  
Upon the bare and leafless oak,  
The ringdoves w●●ing● will provoke,  
A colder blood than you possess,  
To play with me and do no less.  
In bowers of laurel trimly dight,  
We will outwear the silent night,  
While Flora busy is to spread,  
Her richest treasure on our bed.  
Ten glow-worms shall attend,  
And all their sparkling lights shall spend,  
All to adorn and beautify  
Your lodging with most majesty.  
Then in my arms will I enclose,  
Lilies fair mixture with the Rose,  
Whose nice perfections in love's play,  
Shall turn me to the highest Key.  
Thus as we pass the welcome night,  
In sportful pléasures and delight,  
The nimble fairies on the grounds,  
Shall dance and sing melodious sounds.  
If these may serve for to entice.  
Your presence to love's Paradise,  
Then come with me and be my dear,  
And we will straight begin the year.    


TAke, O take those lips away,  
That so sweetly were forsworn,  
And those eyes the break of day  
Lights which do mislead the morn.  
But my kisses bring again,  
Seals of Love, though sealed in vain.  
Hide, O hide those hills of Snow  
Which thy frozen bosom bears,  
On whose tops the pinks that grow,  
Are of those that Aprils wears.  
But my poor heart first set free,  
Bound in those Icy chains by thee.    


LEt the bird of lowest lay  
On the sole Arabian tree,  
Herald sad and Trumpet be,  
To whose sound, chaste wings obey.  
But thou shrinking harbinger,  
foul precurrer of the fiend,  
Augour of the fevers end,  
To this troop come thou not near.  
From this Session interdict,  
Every foul of Tyrant wing,  
Save the Eagle feathered King,  
Keep the obsequy so strict.  
Let the Priest in Surplis white,  
That defuntive music can,  
Be the death divining Swan,  
Lest the Requiem lack his right.  
And thou treble dated Crow,  
That thy sable gender mak'st,  
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,  
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.  
Here the Anthem doth commence,  
Love and constancy is dead,  
Poenix and the Turtle Fled,  
In a mutual flame from hence.  
So they loved as love in twain,  
Had the essence but in one,  
Two distincts but in none,  
Number there in love was slain,  
Hearts remote, yet not asunder,  
Distance and no space was seen,  
Twixt thy Turtle and his Queen,  
But in them it were a wonder.  
So between them Love did shine,  
That the Turtle saw his right,  
Flaming in the Phoenix sight,  
Either was the others' mine.  
Propertie was thus appalled,  
That the self was not the same,  
Single Natures double name,  
Neither two nor one was called.  
Reason in itself confounded,  
Saw division grow together,  
To themselves yet either neither,  
Simple were so well compounded.  
That it cried how true a twain,  
Seemeth this concordant one,  
Love hath Reason, Reason none,  
If what parts can so remain.  
Whereupon it made this throne,  
To the Phoenix and the Dove,  
Cosupreames and stars of Love,  
As Chorus to their tragic Scene.    

Threnes.  

BEauty, Truth, and rarity▪  
Grace in all Simpliicity,  
Hence enclosed, in c●●ers lie.  
Death is now the Phoenix nest,  
And the Turtles loyal breast,  
To eternity doth rest.  
Leaving no posterity  
'twas not their infirmity,  
It was married Chastity.  
Truth may seem but cannot be,  
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she,  
Truth and beauty buried be.  
To this urn let those repair,  
That are either true or fa●●●,  
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.    


WHy should this desert be,  
for it is unpeopled? N●:  
Tongue, I'll hang on every tree.  
That shall civil sayings shoe.  
Some how brief the life of Man  
Runs his erring Pilgrimage,  
That the stretching of a Span.  
buckles in his some of age.  
Some of violated vows,  
twixt the souls of friend and friend,  
But upon the fairest bows,  
or at every sentence end;  
Will I Rosalinda write,  
Teaching all that read to know,  
The quintessence of every spirit.  
heaven would in little show.  
Therefore Heaven Nature changed,  
that one body should be filled  
With all graces wide enlarged,  
nature presently distilled.  
Helen's cheek, but not his heart,  
Cleopatria's majesty:  
Atlanta's better part,  
sad Lu●recia's modesty.  
Thus Rosalinde of many parts  
by heavenly Synods was devised  
Of many faces, eyes and hearts,  
to have the touches dearest prised  
Heaven would these gifts she should have,  
and I to live and die her slave.    

An Epitaph on the admirable dramatic Poet, William' Sheakespeare.  

What need my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,  
The labour of an age, in piled stones,  
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid,  
Under a starte-ypointing Pyramid?  
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,  
What needs thou such weak witness of thy name.  
Thou in our wonder and astoneshment,  
Hast built thyself a livelong Monument:  
For whilst to th'shame of slow endeavouring Art,  
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart,  
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book,  
Those Delphic lines with deep Impression took.  
Then thou our fancy of ourself bereaving,  
Dost make us marble with too much conceiving,  
And so sepulchered in such pomp doth lie,  
That Kings for such a tomb would wish to die.   
I. M.   

On the death of William Shakespeare, who died in April, Anno Dom. 1616.  

REnowned Spenser lie a thought more nigh  
To learned Chauser, and rare Beaumount lie  
A little nearer Spenser to make room,  
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb;  
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift,  
Until dooms-day, for hardly shall a fift  
Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain,  
For whom your curtains may be drawn again.  
If your precedency in death doth bar,  
A fourth place in your sacred Sepulchre!  
Under this sacred Marble of thy own,  
Sleep rare Tragedian Shakespeare, sleep alone;  
Thy unmolested peace in an unshared Cave,  
Possess as Lord, not tenant of thy Grave.  
That unto us, and others it may be,  
Honour hereafter to be laid by thee.   
W. B.   

An elegy on the death of that famous Writer and Actor, M. William Shakespeare.  

I Dare not do thy Memory that wrong,  
Unto our larger griefs to give a tongue;  
I'll only sigh in earnest, and let fall  
My solemn tears at thy great funeral;  
For every eye that rains a shower for thee,  
Laments thy loss in a sad elegy.  
Nor is it fit each humble Muse should have,  
Thy worth his subject, now thou'rt laid in grave;  
No its a flight beyond the pitch of those,  
Whose worthless Pamphlets are not sense in Prose.  
Let learned Johnson sing a Dirge for thee,  
And fill our orb with mournful harmony:  
But we need no Remembrancer, thy Fame  
Shall still accompany thy honoured Name,  
To all posterity; and make us be.  
Sensible of what we lost in losing thee:  
Being the Ages wonder whose smooth Rhimes,  
Did more reform than lash the looser Times.  
Nature herself did her own self admire,  
As oft as thou wert pleased to attire  
Her in her native lustre, and confess,  
Thy dressing was her chiefest comeliness.  
How can we then forget thee, when the age  
Her chiefest Tutor, and the widowed Stage  
Her only favourite in thee hath lost,  
And nature's self what she did brag of most.  
Sleep then rich soul of numbers, whilst poor we,  
Enjoy the profits of thy legacy;  
And think it happiness enough we have,  
So much of thee redeemed from the grave,  
As may suffice to enlighten future times,  
With the bright lustre of thy matchless Rhimes.    
FINIS.   

An Addition of some Excellent Poems, to those precedent, of Renowned Shakespeare, By other Gentlemen.  

His Mistress drawn.  

SItting, and ready to be drawn,  
What make these velvets, silks, and lawn?  
Embroideries, feathers, fringe, and lace,  
When every limb takes like a face?  
And these suspected helps to aid,  
Some form defective and decayed:  
This beauty without fal●ehood fair,  
Needs nought to clothe it but the Aite:  
Yet some thing to the painter's view,  
Where fitly interposed, so new  
He shall (if he can understand)  
Work by my fancy with his hand.  
Draw first a Cloud all save her neck,  
And out of that make day to break,  
Till like her face it do appear,  
And men may think all light rose there.  
Then let the beams of that disperse  
The Cloud, and show the universe:  
But at such distance as the eye,  
May rather it adore than spy:  
The Heavens designed, draw next a Spring,  
Withal that youth or it may bring:  
Four Rivers branching forth like Seas  
And Paradise confined in these.  
Last draw the circle of this Globe,  
And let there be a starry Robe,  
Of Constillations 'bout her hurled,  
And thou hast painted beauty's world.  
But Painter see you do not sell  
A copy of this piece, nor tell  
Whose 'tis: But if it favour find.  
Next sitting we will draw her mind.   
B. L.   

Her mind.  

PAinter y'are come, but may be gone,  
Now I have better thought thereon,  
This work I can perform alone,  
And give you reasons more than one.  
Not that your Art I do refuse,  
But here I may no colours use,  
Besides your hand will never hit  
To draw the thing that cannot sit.  
You could make shift to paint an eye,  
An Eagle towering in the sky,  
A sun, a Sea, a Sandlesse pit,  
And these are like a mind, not it.  
No, to express this mind to sense,  
Would ask a heaven's intelligence,  
Since that nothing can report that flame,  
But what's of kin to whence it came:  
Sweet mind, then speak yourself, and say  
As you go on, by what brave way,  
Our sense you do with knowledge fill,  
And yet remain our wonder still.  
I call you Muse: now make it true,  
Hence forth may every line be you,  
That all may say that see the frame,  
This is no Picture but the same:  
A mind so pure, so perfect fine,  
As 'tis not radiant, but divine,  
And so disdaining any tire,  
'tis got where it can try the fire.  
There (high exalted in the sphere,  
As it another Nature were)  
It moveth all, and makes a flight,  
As circular as infinite,  
Whose Notions when it would express  
In speech, it is with that excess,  
Of grace and music to the ear,  
As what it spoke it planted there.  
The voice so sweet, the words so fair,  
As some soft chime had stroked the air,  
And though the sound were parted thence,  
Still left an echo in the sense,  
But that a mind so rapt so high,  
So swift, so pure should yet apply  
Itself to us, and come so nigh  
Earth's grossness, there's the how, and why?  
Is it because it sees us dull  
And stuck in clay here? it would pull  
us forth by some celestial slight,  
Up to her own sublimed height?  
Or hath she here upon the ground,  
Some Paradise or palace found  
In all the bounds of Beauty fit  
For heart' in habit? there is it.  
Thrice happy house that hast receit,  
For this so softly form, so strait,  
So polished, perfect, and so even,  
As it slid moulded out of heaven.  
Not swelling like the Ocean proud,  
But stooping gently as a Cloud,  
As smooth as oil poured forth, and calm,  
As showers, and sweet as drops of balm,  
Smooth, soft, and sweet, and all a flood,  
Where it may run to any good,  
And where it stays, it there becomes,  
A nest of of odours, spice, and gums.  
In action winged as the wind,  
In rest like spirits left behind,  
Upon a bank or field of flowers,  
Begotten by the wind and showers.  
In the fair mansion let it rest,  
Yet know with what tgou art possessed,  
Thou entertaining in thy breast,  
But such a mind mak'st God a Guest.   
B. I.   

To Ben. Johnson.  

THe sun which doth the greatest comfort bring,  
To absent friends, because the self same thing,  
They know they see, how ever absent is,  
Here our best Hay maker, forgive me this;  
It is our Country stile in this warm shine,  
I lie and dream of your full meremayd wine  
Oh we have water mixed with claret Lees,  
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies,  
Then beer, good only for a Sonnet strain,  
With fustian Metaphors to stuff the brain;  
So mixed, that given to the thirstiest one,  
'Twill not prove alms unless he have the stone:  
'tis sold by Puritans, mixed with intent,  
To make it serve for either Sacrament,  
I think with one draught man's intention fades.  
Two Cups had quite spoiled Hemers Ill●ads.  
'tis liquour that will find out Su●cliffs wit,  
Lie where it will, and make him write worse yet  
Filled with such moisture in a grievous squalme,  
Did Robert wisdom write his singing psalms;  
And so must I do this, and yet I think,  
It is a potion sent us down to drink,  
By special providence, keeps us from fights,  
Makes us not laugh, when we make legs to Knights:  
'tis that which keeps our minds fit for our States,  
A medicine to obey our Magistrates.  
For we do live more free than you, no hate,  
No envy of another's happy state  
Moves us! we are equal every whi●  
Of land that God gives men, here is their wit,  
If we consider fully for our best,  
And gravest man will with his main house jest  
Scarce please you we want subtlety to do  
The city tricks, lie, hate, and flatter too:  
Here are none that can bear a painted show,  
Strike when you wink, and then lament the blow,  
Who like Mills set the right way to grind,  
Can make there gains alike with every wind:  
Only some fellow with the subtlest pate,  
Amongst us may perchance equivoca●e,  
At felling of a horse, and that's the most,  
Me thinks the little wit I had is lost  
Since I saw you, for wit is like a r●st,  
Held up at Tinnis, which men do the best  
With the best Gamesters, what things have we seen,  
Done at the Mermaoid, here words that have been  
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,  
As if that every one from whence they came,  
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,  
And had resolved to live a fool the rest,  
Of his dull life, than when there has been thrown,  
Wit able eno●gh to justify the town,  
For three daves past, wit that might warrant be,  
For the whole city to talk foolishly,  
Till that were canciled, and when we were gone,  
We le●t an air behind us which alone,  
Was able to make the three next companies,  
Right witty, though down right cockneys:  
When I consider this, and see that row,  
The Country Gentlemen begin to allow  
My wit for dry bobs, than I needs must cry,  
I see my days of ballading grows nigh.  
I can already riddle, and can sing  
Catches, sell bargains, and I fear shall bring  
Myself to speak the hardest words I find,  
Over as oft as any with one wind  
That takes no medicines, but one thought of thee,  
Makes me remember all these things to be  
The wit of our young men, fellows that show,  
No part of good, yet utter all they know,  
Who like Trees and the Guard have growing souls,  
Only strong destiny which all controls,  
I hope hath left a better Fate in store,  
For me thy friend, then to live evermore  
Banished unto this; home 'twill once again,  
Bring me to thee, who will make smooth and plain  
The way of Knowledge for me, and then I,  
Who have no good in me but simplicity;  
Know that it will my greatest comfort be,  
To acknowledge all the rest to come from thee.   
F. B.   

His Mistress Shade.  

COme then, and like two Doves of silver wings,  
Let our souls fly to th'shades, where ever springs,  
Sit smiling on the banks, where balm and oil,  
Roses and Cassia crown the untilled soil:  
Where no disease reigns, or infection comes,  
To blast the air, but ambergris and gums:  
This, that, and every thicket doth transpire,  
More sweet than spikenard through the hallow fire  
Where every tree a fruitful issue bears,  
Of mellow Apples, ripened Plumbs and pears,  
And all the shrubs with sparkling spangles show,  
Like morning Sunshine tinselling the dew:  
Here in green meadows ●its eternal May,  
Purfling the margins, while perpetual day,  
So double guilds the air, as that no night,  
Can ever rust th'enamel of the light:  
Here handsome striplings, naked youngling run,  
Their goals for Virgin kisses, which when done,  
Then unto dancing forth the learned Round,  
So soon as each his dangling lock● hath crowned,  
With rosy Chaplets, lilies, Pansies red,  
So●t Saffron Circles to perfume the head.  
And here we'll sit on Primrose banks and see,  
Loves Chorus led by Cupid, and we'll be,  
Two loving followers to the grove,  
Where Poets sing the stories of their Love.  
There shalt thou here divine Museus sing,  
Of Hero and Leander, then I'll bring  
Thee to the stand where honoured Homer reade●,  
His Odisses, and his heigh Iliads,  
Unto the Prince of Shades, whom once his Pen,  
Entitled the Grecian Prince of men.  
To Linus, then to Pinder, thereupon  
I'll bring thee (Hearieke) to Anacreon,  
Quaffing his full crowned Cups of burning wine,  
And in his Raptures, speaking lines of thine,  
Like to his subject, and as his frantic  
looks renders him, true Baccanalian-like,  
Besmeer'd with grapes, welcome he will thee thither,  
Where both may laugh, both drink, both rage togethe●.  
Then stately Virgil, witty Ovid by,  
Whom fair Corinna stands, and doth comply  
With Ivory wrists, his laureate head, and steeps,  
His eyes in dew of kisses while he sleeps.  
Then soft Ca●ull●●, sharp fanged martial,  
And towering Lncan, Horace, Juvenal;  
And snaky Perseus; these and those whom rage,  
(Dropped from the jar of heaven) filled to enrage  
All times unto their frenzies, thou shalt there  
Behold them in an amphitheatre.  
Amongst which Synod crowned with sacred bays,  
And flattering joy we'll have to recite their plays.  
Shakespeare and Beamond, swans to whom the Spheare●  
Listen, while they call back the former year.  
To teach the truth of Scenes, and more for thee,  
There yet remains brave soul than thou canst see  
By glimmering of a fancy: do but come,  
And there I'll show thee that illustrious room,  
In which thy father Johnson shall be placed,  
As in a Globe of radiant fire, and graced,  
To be of that high hierarchy, where none  
But brave souls take illumination:  
Immediately from heaven, but hark the cock,  
(The bellman of the night) proclaims the clock,  
Of late struck one, and now I feel the prime  
Of day break through the pregnant East, 'tis time  
I vanish: more I had to say,  
But night determines here, away.    

Lavinia walking in a frosty Morning.  

I'th' nonnage of a winter's day,  
Lavi●ia glorious as May,  
To give the morn an earlier birth,  
Paced a mile of crusted earth,  
When each place by which she came,  
From her veins conceived flame.  
The amorous plant began to strive,  
Which should first be sinsitive,  
Every hoary headed tw●gge,  
dropped his Snowy periwig,  
And each bough his Icy beard,  
On either side his walks was heard;  
Whispers of decrepit wood,  
Calling to their roots for blood:  
The gentle soil did mildly greet,  
The welcome kisses of her feet,  
And to retain such a Treasure,  
Like wax dissolving took her measure.  
Lavinia stood amazed to see,  
Things of yearly certainty:  
Thus to rebel against their Season,  
And though a stranger to the Reason,  
Back retiring quenched their heat,  
And Winter took his former seat.    

A Sigh sent to his Mistress.  

I Sent a Sigh unto my Mistress ear,  
Which went her way and ne'er came there,  
I hasted after least some other fair,  
Should mildly entertain this travelling air,  
Each flowery garden I did search for fear,  
It might mistake a lily for her ear.  
And having there took lodging, still might dwell,  
Housed in the Concave of crystal Bell:  
I sought amongst the Birds, thinking it might,  
Resort for company the winged flight,  
And so play Truant, but alas each note,  
They merrily did warble in the throat;  
Told me it was but the mirthy sign,  
If one were there, I knew 'twas none of thine?  
At last one frosty morning I did spy,  
The subtle wanderer in the sky,  
At sight of me it trembled, and for fear,  
I bare it to my Saint, and prayed her take,  
This new born offspring for the Master's sake?  
Which she perceiving granted me her lip,  
And so preferred it to her softer tip.  
And now this pendant burden now doth hear,  
Each thing that's whispered in her ear.  
I grieve, cause I have lost a tear, and she  
With sorrow is more happier far than me,  
Yet there is remedy left to ease me,  
Give me but one of hers, and so she'll please me.    

An allegorical allusion of melancholy thoughts to Bees.  

COme you swarms of thoughts, and bring,  
to this crazy Hive of mine,  
Not your honey, but your sting,  
naked I my heart resign,  
To your Lanclets therefore stick,  
Every part and parsell thick.  
From the garden of her face,  
where these Bees were wont to find,  
Amber sweets in every place,  
scattered by a chiding wind.  
Hie you home, for now you are,  
Merchants turned to men of war.  
Some brought me incense from her breath,  
some the Velvet of her brow  
Some a smile, some underueath  
tincture of lip coral, now  
Every one that thence doth ●●ie,  
Brings a needle from her eye.  
Register the breach of peace,  
for the time is not expired,  
'Twas for life, but if it cease,  
(amity being still required)  
As you write it on my heart,  
Print it with your little dart.  
Leave not so but straight torment,  
Hope, whose chief adventures chose.  
And for more, though now content,  
to draw backwards and depose,  
And from all dominion fling,  
As a Drone, though once your King.  
Let him bare his vast designs,  
to desires as vast as they,  
High-roof thoughts and spacious minds,  
are not for Cottages of clay,  
Monarchies will fit them best,  
Petty States affect but rest.  
Keep you in, for if you stray,  
from your holds, no other fears,  
Need afflict you night or day,  
but by scalding water tears,  
For she vows in love's defence,  
Love no more shall fire you hence.  
All the doubt is as you grow  
Wasps, because your bags are dry,  
So as you your stings forgo,  
you will turn to arrant Flies,  
And when Summer sets you free,  
Trouble her as well as me.  
Yet beware, the baits are laid.  
nets are spread, the flames are high,  
You had need to be afraid,  
for there's lightning in her eye,  
Every hair's sleeve of silk,  
And each breast a wave of milk.  
Therefore circumspectly light,  
on her hand, for sugar grows  
All the country over quite,  
Feed and say, but in the close,  
To the wasp, the Bee, the fly,  
All's provided for, but I.   
I. G.   

The Primrose.  

Ask me why I send you here,  
This firstling of the Winter year,  
Ask me why I send to you,  
This Primrose, all bepearled with dew;  
I straight will whisper in your ears,  
The sweets of Love, are washed with tears.  
Ask me why this flower doth show,  
So yellow, green, and sickly too,  
Ask me why the stalk is weak,  
And bending yet it doth not break.  
I must tell you these discover,  
What doubts and fears are in a Lover.    

A Sigh.  

Go thou gentle whispering wind,  
Bear this Sigh, and if thou find,  
Where my cruel fair doth rest,  
Cast it in her Snowy breast,  
That inflamed by my desire,  
It may set her heart on fire.  
Taste her lip, and then confess,  
If Arabia do possess;  
Or that honey Hybla Hill,  
Sweets like those which thence distil:  
Those sweet kisses thou shalt gain,  
Shall reward thee for thy pain.  
Boldly light upon her lip,  
There suck odours, and thence skip.  
To her bosom, lastly fall  
Down and wander over all.  
Range about those Ivory hills,  
From whose every part distils,  
Amber dew these spices grow,  
There pure streams of Nectar flow:  
There perfume thyself and bring,  
All those sweets upon thy wing:  
As thou returnest change by thy power,  
Every weed into a flower.  
Turn every Thistle to a Vine,  
And make the Bramble Eglantine:  
For so rich a booty made,  
Do but this and I am paid.  
Thou canst with thy powerful blast,  
Heat apace and cool as fast:  
Thou canst kindle hidden flame,  
And again destroy the same;  
Then for pity either stir  
Up the flames of love in her,  
That alike both flames may shine,  
Or else quite extinguish thine.    

A Blush.  

STay lusty blood, where canst thou seek,  
So blessed a place? as in her cheek?  
How canst thou from that place retire,  
Where beauty doth command desire?  
But if thou canst not stay, then flow  
Down to her panting paps below,  
Flow like a deluge from her Breast  
Where Venus' Swans hath built their nest;  
And so take glory to disdain,  
With Azure blew each swelling vein,  
Then run boiling through each part,  
Till thou hast warmed her frozen heart;  
If from love it would retire,  
Martyr it with gentle fire:  
And having searched each secret place,  
Fly thou back into her face;  
Where live blessed in changing those,  
White Lylly, to a Rose.    

Orpheus' Lute.  

WHen Orpheus sweetly did complain,  
Upon the Lute with heavy strain,  
How his E●rydices was slain;  
The trees to hear  
Obtain an ear,  
And after left it off again,  
At every stroke and every stay,  
The boughs kept time, and nodding lay,  
And listened, bended, all one way,  
The aspen Tree,  
As well as he,  
Began to shake and learn to play.  
If wood could speak, a tree might hear,  
If wood could sound true grief to th'ear,  
A tree might drop an Amber tear:  
If wood so well,  
Could ring a knell,  
The cypress might condole the beer.  
The standing Nobles of the Grove,  
Hearing dead wood to speak and move,  
The fatal Axe began to love,  
Thy envied death,  
That gave such breath,  
As men alive do Saints above.    


AM I despised because you say,  
And I believe that I am grey?  
Know Lady you have but your day,  
And night will come when men will swear,  
Time hath spilled Snow on your hair?  
Then when in your glass you seek,  
But find no Rose buds in your cheek,  
No nor the bed to give thee show,  
Where such a rare carnation grew,  
And such a smiling Tulippe too;  
O then too late in close your Chamber keeping,  
It will be told.  
That you are old.  
By those true tears y'are weeping.    

Upon a Gentlewoman walking on the grass.  

Sure 'twas the Spring went by, for th'earth did waste,  
Her long hid sweets at her approach, and placed,  
Quick pregnant flowers upon the verdant grass,  
To ●eath new freshness where she willed to pass.  
The tender blade veiled as she trod and kissed,  
The foot that covered it, but when it mist,  
Her gentle pressure (like a wife whose bed  
Is scorned) it drooped, and since hung down its head:  
Till by a strength Love gave to entertain,  
Her wished return it reared itself again:  
And now stands tall in pride; but had it seen  
Her face (that court of beauty where the Queen  
Of Love is always resident) it would  
When the sun dallies with it, weep in cold  
And pearled dew at noon, greeved that her face  
Might not as did her feet deign equal grace  
In moving nearer to it: what my happy eyes  
Saw there (though from that hour their faculties  
Are ever forfeit) this bright Vision yet,  
Must needs engage me in a further debt  
To her, than there want quits, since what I see,  
In being less fair, must be a less to me.    

On his Love going to Sea.  

FArewell (Fair Saint) may not the Seas or wind,  
Swell like the hearts and eyes you leave behind,  
But calm and gentle like the looks you bear,  
Smile in your face, and whisper in your ear.  
Let no bold billow offer to arise,  
That it may nearer look upon your eyes,  
lest wind and wave enamoured on your form,  
Do throng and crowd themselves into a storm,  
But if it be your fate vast Sea's to Love,  
Of my becalmed heart, learn how to move.  
Move then but in a gentle lover's pace,  
No wrinkles nor no furrows in your face:  
And you fierce winds, see that you tell your tale  
In such a breath as may but fill her sail.  
So whilst you court her, each your several way,  
You shall her safely to her Port convey,  
And lose her in a noble way of wooing,  
Whilst both contribute to your own undoing.    


Ask me no more where Jove bestows,  
When June is past, the fading Rose,  
For in your beauties Orient deep,  
These flowers as in them Causes sleep.  
Ask me no more whether do stray,  
The golden atoms of the day,  
For in pure love heaven did prepare,  
Those powders to enrich your hair.  
Ask me no more whether doth haste,  
The Nightingale when May is past,  
For in your sweet dividing throat,  
She winters and keeps warm her note.  
Ask me no more where those stars light,  
That downwards fall in dead of night,  
For in your eyes they sit, and there,  
Fixed become, as in their sphere.  
Ask me no more if East and West,  
The Phoenixe builds her spiced nest,  
For unto you at last she flies,  
And in your fragrant bosom dies,   
FINIS.