347.

First direful Hate shall turn to Peace,
And Love relent in deep disdain;

And Death his fatal stroke shall cease,
And Envy pity every pain;

And Pleasure mourn, and Sorrow smile,
Before I talk of any guile.

First Time shall stay his stayless race,
And Winter bless his brows with corn;
And snow bemoisten July's face,
And Winter spring and summer mourn,
Before my pen by help of Fame
Cease to recite thy sacred name.

SINCE

Since Brass, Nor Stone

T. Lodge

INCE brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
O fearful meditation! Where, alack!

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back i
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O none, unless this miracle have might,

That in black ink my love may still shine bright.

W. Shakespeare

348.

Stella, Think Not

STELLA, think not that I by verse seek fame,

Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee; Thine eyes my pride, thy lips mine history:

If thou praise not, all other praise is shame.
Nor so ambitious am I as to frame

A nest for my young praise in laurel tree:
In truth, I swear, I wish not there should be
Graved in my epitaph a poet's name.
Ne, if I would, could I just title make,
That any laud thereof to me should grow,
Without my plumes from others' wings I take:
For nothing from my wit or will doth flow,
Since all my words thy beauty doth indite,

And Love doth hold my hand, and makes me write.
Sir P. Sidney

349.

Love Unalterable

LET me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove :

O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,

350.

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Syrinx

W. Shakespeare

PAN'S Syrinx was a girl indeed,

Though now she's turned into a reed;
From that dear reed Pan's pipe does come,
A pipe that strikes Apollo dumb;
Nor flute, nor lute, nor gittern can
So chant it as the pipe of Pan:
Cross-gartered swains and dairy girls,
With faces smug and round as pearls,
When Pan's shrill pipe begins to play,
With dancing wear out night and day;
The bagpipe's drone his hum lays by,
When Pan sounds up his minstrelsy;
His minstrelsy! O base! this quill,
Which at my mouth with wind I fill,
Puts me in mind, though her I miss,
That still my Syrinx' lips I kiss.

7. Lyly

351. The Merry Cuckoo, Messenger of Spring THE merry Cuckoo, messenger of Spring,

His trumpet shrill hath thrice already sounded; That warns all lovers wait upon their king, Who now is coming forth with garland crownèd. With noise whereof the quire of birds resounded

Their anthems sweet devised of Love's praise;
That all the woods their echoes back rebounded,

As if they knew the meaning of their lays.

But 'mongst them all which did Love's honour raise,
No word was heard of her that most it ought:
But she his precept idly disobeys,

And doth his idle message set at nought.
Therefore, O Love, unless she turn to thee
Ere Cuckoo end, let her a rebel be!

352.

HAR

To His Book

E. Spenser

APPY ye leaves when as those lily hands,
Which hold my life in their dead-doing might,
Shall handle you, and hold in love's soft bands,
Like captives trembling at the victor's sight:
And happy lines, on which with starry light
Those lamping eyes will deign sometimes to look
And read the sorrows of my dying sprite,
Written with tears in heart's close bleeding book:
And happy rhymes, bathed in the sacred brook
Of Helicon, whence she derived is,

When ye behold that angel's blessèd look,
My soul's long lackèd food, my heaven's bliss:
Leaves, lines, and rhymes, seek her to please alone,
Whom if ye please, I care for other none.

353.

Laura

E. Spenser

ROSE-CHEEK'D Laura, come;

Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's

Silent music, either other

Sweetly gracing.

Lovely forms do flow

From concent divinely framèd:
Heaven is music, and thy beauty's
Birth is heavenly.

These dull notes we sing

Discords need for helps to grace them;
Only beauty purely loving

Knows no discord;

But still moves delight,

Like clear springs renew'd by flowing,

Ever perfect, ever in them

Selves eternal.

T. Campion

354. Let Others Sing of Knights and Paladines

L

ET others sing of Knights and Paladines,

In agèd accents and untimely words,

Paint shadows in imaginary lines,

Which well the reach of their high wit records.
But I must sing of thee, and those fair eyes
Authentic shall my verse in time to come,

When yet th' unborn shall say, Lo where she lies!
Whose beauty made him speak, that else was dumb!
These are the arcs, the trophies I erect,

That fortify thy name against old age;

And these thy sacred virtues must protect

Against the Dark, and Time's consuming rage.
Though th' error of my youth in them appear,
Suffice, they show I lived, and loved thee dear.

S. Daniel