With orient peal, with ruby red,

With marble white, with sapphire blue,
Her body every way is fed,

Yet soft in touch and sweet in view:
Heigh-ho, fair Rosaline !
Nature herself her shape admires;
The gods are wounded in her sight;
And Love forsakes his heavenly fires,
And at her eyes his brand doth light:
Heigh-ho, would she were mine!

Then muse not, nymphs, though I bemoan

The absence of fair Rosaline,

Since for a fair there's fairer none,

Nor for her virtues so divine:

Heigh-ho, fair Rosaline!

Heigh-ho, my heart! would God that she were mine!

Thomas Lodge.

XCVI.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

CAMPASPE.

CUPID and my Campaspe played

At cards for kisses; Cupid paid:

He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,

His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws

The coral of his lip, the rose

Growing on's cheek (but none knows how):
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple on his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win:
At last he set her both his eyes-
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.

O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?

John Lyly.

XCVII.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

CELIA.

DRINK to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

And I'll not look for wine.

The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;

But might I of Jove's nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honouring thee
As giving it a hope that there

It could not withered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe

And sent'st it back to me;

Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,

Not of itself, but thee!

Ben Jonson.

XCVIII.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA.

You meaner beauties of the night,
Which poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies,
What are you, when the moon shall rise?

Ye violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own,—
What are you, when the rose is blown?

Ye curious chanters of the wood

That warble forth dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents; what's your praise
When Philomel her voice doth raise ?
So when my mistress shall be seen
In sweetness of her looks and mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a queen,
Tell me, if she were not designed
Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

XCIX.

Sir Henry Wotton.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

PEARLS AND RUBIES.

SOME asked me where the rubies grew;

And nothing I did say,

But with my finger pointed to

The lips of Julia.

Some asked how pearls did grow, and where:

Then spoke I to my girl

To part her lips, and show me there

The quarrelets of pearl.

C.

Robert Herrick.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

CHERRY RIPE.

CHERRY-RIPE, ripe, ripe (I cry),
Full and fair ones; come and buy!
If so be you ask me, where
They do grow? I answer, there,
Where my Julia's lips do smile;
There's the land, or cherries' isle;
Whose plantations fully show,
All the year, where cherries grow.

Robert Herrick.

CI.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

WHERE CHERRIES GROW.

THERE is a garden in her face,

Where roses and white lilies blow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits do grow;
There cherries grow that none may buy,
Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry.
Those cherries fairly do enclose

Of orient pearl a double row,

Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rose-buds filled with snow:
Yet them no peer nor prince may buy,
Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still;
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threat'ning with piercing frowns to kill
All that approach with eye or hand
These sacred cherries to come nigh,
- Till Cherry-Ripe themselves do cry!

Richard Allison.

CII.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

THE ROSARY.

ONE asked me where the roses grew,―

I bade him not go seek;

But forthwith made my Julia show

A bud in either cheek.

Robert Herrick.

CIII.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

JULIA.

So look the mornings, when the sun
Paints them with fresh vermilion;
So cherries blush, and Catherine pears,
And apricots, in youthful years;

So corals look more lovely red,
And rubies lately polished;
So purest diaper doth shine,

Stained by the beams of claret wine;
As Julia looks, when she doth dress
Her either cheek with bashfulness.

Robert Herrick.

CIV.

LOVE'S PRAISES.

ASK ME NO MORE.

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauties, orient deep,
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
These powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither 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 is their sphere.