WHA MELICERTUS' MADRIGAL. HAT are my sheep without their wonted food? My sheep consume and faint for want of blood, No turtle without pheere.* The day without the sun doth lour for woe, Than to embrace his dear. power; The stars from earthly humours gain their light, It feeds, it fails, it ends. Kind looks, clear to your joy behold her eyes, ου Whereto this solace tends! MENAPHON'S SONG IN HIS BED. You restless cares, companions of the night, Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days; * Properly, fere-mate, companion. Mourn heavens, mourn earth; your shepherd is forlorn ; Whose fiery eyes exhale my vital breath, Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days; SONG. FAIR fields, proud Flora's vaunt, why is't you smile, Whenas I languish? I live to sorrow, you to pleasure spring: Why do you spring thus? What, will not Boreas, tempest's wrathful king, And send forth winter in her rusty weed Whiles I distressed do tune my country reed But heaven, and earth, time, place, and every power To turn my blissful sweets to baleful sour, The heaven whereto my thoughts may not aspire. It was my fault t' embrace my bane, the fire Mine be the pain, but hers the cruel cause Wherefore no time my banning prayers shall pause, MENAPHON'S ECLOGUE. TOO weak the wit, too slender is the brain, That means to mark the power and worth of love; Not one that lives, except he hap to prove, Can tell the sweet, or tell the secret pain. Yet I that have been 'prentice to the grief, Like to the cunning sea-man from afar, By guess will take the beauty of that star, Whose influence must yield me chief relief. You censors of the glory of my dear, With reverence and lowly bent of knee, Attend and mark what her perfections be; For in my words my fancies shall appear. Her locks are plighted like the fleece of wool That Jason with his Grecian mates atchieved; As pure as gold, yet not from gold derived; As full of sweets, as sweet of sweets is full. Her brows are pretty tables of conceit, Her eyes, fair eyes, like to the purest lights Her lips are roses over-washed with dew, No frost their fair,* no wind doth waste their power. Her crystal chin like to the purest mould, Her neck like to an ivory shining tower, Her paps are like fair apples in the prime, They never vail their fair through winter's frown, Her body beauty's best esteemed bower, [pain; The thought whereof (not touch) hath wrought my Whose fair all fair and beauties doth devour. Fairness-beauty. † Pitched. + Dwells. Her maiden mount, the dwelling house of pleasure; Who talks the best, can say but fairer none; All you that hear, let not my silly style Seld speaketh love, but sighs his secret pains; Tears are his truchmen,* words do make him tremble: How sweet is love to them that can dissemble In thoughts and looks, till they have reaped the gains! I think, yet what I think tongue cannot tell: WH MELICERTUS' ECLOGUE. HAT need compare, where sweet exceeds compare? Who draws his thoughts of love from senseless Their pomp and greatest glories doth impair, [things, And mounts love's heaven with over-laden wings. Stones, herbs, and flowers, the foolish spoils of earth, Floods, metals, colours, dalliance of the eye; These show conceit is stained with too much dearth, Such abstract fond compares make cunning die. * Fr. Trucheman-interpreter. Sitting at a banquet with her, where also was the Prince of Orange, with all the greatest princes of the state, the Earl, though he could reasonably well speak French, would not speak one French word, but all English, whether he asked any question, or answered it, but all was done by trucheman.'-PUTTENHAM-Art of Poetry, lib. iii. ch. 23. |