THE SHEPHERD'S COMMENDATION OF HIS NYMPH.

WHAT shepherd can express

The favour of her face?
To whom in this distress

I do appeal for grace;

A thousand Cupids fly
About her gentle eye;

From which each throws a dart
That kindleth soft sweet fire

Within my sighing heart;

Possessed by desire

No sweeter life I try

Than in her love to die.

The lily in the field

That glories in its white,

For pureness now must yield
And render up his right.

Heaven pictur'd in her face
Doth promise joy and grace.

Fair Cynthia's silver light
That beats on running streams,
Compares not with her white,
Whose hairs are all sunbeams.

So bright my nymph doth shine
As day unto my eyne.

THE SHEPHERD'S COMMENDATION OF HIS NYMPH.

With this there is a red,
Exceeds the damask rose :
Which in her cheeks is spread
Where every favour grows;

In sky there is no star

But she surmounts it far.

When Phoebus from the bed

Of Thetis doth arise,

The morning blushing red,

In fair carnation wise;

He shows in my nymph's face,

As queen of every grace.

This pleasant lily-white,

This taint of roseate red,

This Cynthia's silver light,

This sweet fair Dea spread,

These sunbeams in mine eye,

These beauties make me die.

EARL OF OXFORD.

THE wrathful winter 'proching on apace,

With blust'ring blasts had all ybared the treen,

And old Saturnus with his frosty face

With chilling cold had pierced the tender green;
The mantles rent, wherein enwrapped been
The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapets torn, and every bloom down blown.

The soil that erst so seemly was to seen,

Was all despoil'd of her beauty's hue:

And soote fresh flowers (wherewith the summer's queen

Had clad the earth) now Boreas' blasts down blew,

And small fowls flocking, in their song did rue

The winter's wrath, wherewith each thing defaced
In woful wise bewailed the summer past.