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MELICERTUS' MADRIGAL.

WHAT are my sheep without their wonted food?

What is my life except I gain my love?

My sheep consume and faint for want of blood,
My life is lost unless I grace approve :
No flower that sapless thrives,

No turtle without pheere.*

The day without the sun doth lour for woe,
Then woe mine eyes, unless they beauty see;
My sun Samela's eyes, by whom I know
Wherein delight consists, where pleasures be:
Nought more the heart revives

Than to embrace his dear.

The stars from earthly humours gain their light,
Our humours by their light possess their power;
Samela's eyes, fed by my weeping sight,
Infuse my pain or joys by smile or lour:
So wends the source of love;

It feeds, it fails, it ends.

Kind looks, clear to your joy behold her eyes,
Admire her heart, desire to taste her kisses;
In them the heaven of joy and solace lies,
Without them every hope his succour misses:
O how I love to prove
Whereto this solace tends!

MENAPHON'S SONG IN HIS BED.

You restless cares, companions of the night,
That wrap my joys in folds of endless woes,
Tire on my heart, and wound it with your spite,
Since love and fortune prove my equal foes:

Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.

* Properly, fere-mate, companion.

Mourn heavens, mourn earth; your shepherd is forlorn;
Mourn times and hours, since bale invades my bower;
Curse every tongue the place where I was born,
Curse every thought the life which makes me lour:
Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.
Was I not free? was I not fancy's aim?
Framed not desire my face to front disdain?
I was; she did; but now one silly maim
Makes me to droop, as he whom love hath slain :
Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.
Yet drooping, and yet living to this death,
I sigh, I sue for pity at her shrine,

Whose fiery eyes exhale my vital breath,
And make my flocks with parching heat to pine:
Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.
Fade they, die I: long may she live to bliss,
That feeds a wanton fire with fuel of her form,
And makes perpetual summer where she is;
Whiles I do cry, o'ertook with envy's storm,

Farewell my hopes, farewell my happy days;
Welcome sweet grief, the subject of my lays.

SONG.

FAIR fields, proud Flora's vaunt, why is't you smile,

Whenas I languish?

You golden meads, why strive you to beguile

My weeping anguish?

I live to sorrow, you to pleasure spring:

Why do you spring thus?

What, will not Boreas, tempest's wrathful king,
Take some pity on us,

And send forth winter in her rusty weed
To wail my bemoanings,

Whiles I distressed do tune my country reed
Unto my groanings?

But heaven, and earth, time, place, and every power
Have with her conspired

To turn my

blissful sweets to baleful sour,

Since fond I desired

The heaven whereto my thoughts may not aspire.
Ah me, unhappy!

It was my fault t' embrace my bane, the fire
That forceth me die.

Mine be the pain, but hers the cruel cause
Of this strange torment;
Wherefore no time my banning prayers shall
Till proud she repent.

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,
Where love his records of delight doth quote;
On them her dallying locks do daily float,
As love full oft doth feed upon the bait.

Her eyes, fair eyes, like to the purest lights
That animate the sun, or cheer the day;
In whom the shining sunbeams brightly play,
Whiles fancy doth on them divine delights.
Her cheeks like ripened lilies steeped in wine,
Or fair pomegranate kernels washed in milk,
Or snow-white threads in nets of crimson silk,
Or
gorgeous clouds upon the sun's decline.

Her lips are roses over-washed with dew,
Or like the purple of Narcissus' flower;

No frost their fair,* no wind doth waste their power.
But by her breath her beauties do renew.

Her crystal chin like to the purest mould,
Enchased with dainty daisies soft and white,
Where fancy's fair pavilion once is pight,t
Whereas embraced his beauties he doth hold.

Her neck like to an ivory shining tower,
Where through with azure veins sweet nectar runs,
Or like the down of swans where Senesse woons,+
Or like delight that doth itself devour.

Her paps are like fair apples in the prime,

As round as orient pearls, as soft as down;

They never vail their fair through winter's frown,
But from their sweets love sucked his summer time.

Her body beauty's best esteemed bower,
Delicious, comely, dainty, without stain;

[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;
Not like, for why no like surpasseth wonder:
O blest is he may bring such beauties under,
Or search by suit the secrets of that treasure!
Devoured in thought, how wanders my device!
What rests behind I must divine upon:

Who talks the best, can say but fairer none;
Few words well couched do most content the wise.
All you that hear, let not my silly style
Condemn my zeal, for what my tongue should say,
Serves to enforce my thoughts to seek the way
Whereby my woes and cares I do beguile.

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! All lonely I complain, and what I

say

I think, yet what I think tongue cannot tell:
Sweet censors, take my silly worst for well;
My faith is firm, though homely be my lay.

WH

MELICERTUS' ECLOGUE.

WHAT 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.

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