If you were I and I were you, How could the roseleaf love the rue, Algernon Charles Swinburne. LXXXIX. LOVE'S PRAISES. HIS LADY'S BEAUTY. GIVE place, ye lovers, here before That spent your boasts and brags in vain; My Lady's beauty passeth more The best of yours, I dare well sayen, Than doth the sun the candlelight, Or brightest day the darkest night. And thereto hath a troth as just As it by writing sealed were;- I could rehearse, if that I would, The whole effect of Nature's plaint, When she had lost the perfect mould, The like to whom she could not paint : I know she swore, with raging mind, There was no loss by law of kind That could have gone so near her heart; And this was chiefly all her pain,— She could not make the like again. Sith Nature thus gave her the praise On your behalf might well be sought, XC. Henry, Earl of Surrey. LOVE'S PRAISES. BEAUTY PREFIGURED. WHEN in the chronicle of wasted time In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights; Of hand, of foot, of lips, of eye, of brow, Of this our time, all you prefiguring; And for they looked but with divining eyes, For we, which now behold these present days, XCI. LOVE'S PRAISES. HIS LOVE'S ETERNAL SUMMER. SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day? And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; William Shakespeare. XCII. LOVE'S PRAISES. NATURE'S THEFT FROM LOVE. 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 And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair : A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both, William Shakespeare. XCIII. LOVE'S PRAISES. FAIR, KIND, AND TRUE. LET not my love be called idolatry, Since all alike my songs and praises be Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. "Fair, kind, and true" is all my argument, “Fair, kind, and true" varying 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. William Shakespeare. XCIV. LOVE'S PRAISES. SYLVIA. WHO is Sylvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heavens such grace did lend her, That she might admired be. Is she kind, as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness; Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; Then to Sylvia let us sing, That Sylvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing William Shakespeare. XCV. LOVE'S PRAISES. ROSALINE. LIKE to the clear in highest sphere Her eyes are sapphires set in snow, Her cheeks are like the blushing cloud Or like the silver crimson shroud Her lips are like two budded roses Heigh-ho, would she were mine! Her neck is like a stately tower Her paps are centres of delight, Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame, Where Nature moulds the dew of light To feed perfection with the same : Heigh-ho, would she were mine! |