To hearts that cannot vary,
Absence is present, Time doth tarry
THE ancient readers of Heaven's Book,
Which with curious eye did look
Into Nature's story;
All things under Cynthia took
To be transitory.
This the learned only knew,
But now all men find it true,
Cynthia is descended,
With bright beams, and heavenly hue,
And lesser stars attended.
Lands and seas she rules below,
Where things change, and ebb, and flow,
Spring, wax old, and perish:
Only Time which all doth mow,
This song was sung before her sacred Majesty at a shew on horseback, wherewith the Right Honourable the Earl of Cumberland presented her Highness on May-day last.
With fresh youth and beauty:
All her lovers old do grow;
But their hearts they do not so,
In their love and duty.
WHO gives a gift to bind a friend thereby,
Doth set or put his gift to usury;
And he that gives a gift that is not free,
Give where he list, so that he give not me.
For bought and sold is friendship strange;
Who lives by selling, lives by change.
And he, that loves to change his friend,
Will turn to nothing in the end.
In vain I live, sith Sorrow lives in me;
In vain lives Sorrow, since by her I live;
Life works in vain, where Death will master be,
Death strives in vain where Life doth virtue give.
Thus each of us would work another's woe,
And hurts himself in vain, and helps his foe.
wrong by force had justice put to flight,
Yet were there hope she might return again:
If lawless war had shut her up from sight,
Yet lawful peace' might soon restore her train.
But now, alas! what hope of hope is left,
When wrongful death hath her of life bereft?
The sun, that often falls, doth often rise:
The moon that waineth, waxeth full with light:
But he, that Death in chains of darkness ties,
Can never break the bands of lasting night.
What then remains but tears of loss to wail,
In which all hope of mortal help doth fail?
Who then shall weep? nay, who shall tears refrain,
If common harms must move the minds of all?
Too few are found, that wrongful hearts restrain;
And of too few, too many Death doth call,
These common harms I wail among the rest,
But private loss denies to be exprest.
A POEM IN THE NATURE OF AN EPITAPH
OF A FRIEND.f
IF stepdame Nature have been scant,
In dealing Beauty's gift to me:
My wit shall help supply that want,
And skill in stead of shape shall be.
My stature, I confess, is small,
And therefore nill I boast of war:
My name shall fill the heavens and all;
This skin shall serve to hide that scar.
My head to bear the helm unfit,
My hands unapt to murder men;
But little heads oft hold much wit,
And feeble hands can guide a pen.
DEATH is my doom, awarded by Disdain;
A lingering death that will not let me die:
This length of life is lengthning of my pain,
And length of pain gets strength of pain thereby:
And strength of pain makes pain of longer last,
Ah who hath ty'd my life to pain so fast?
And yet I seem as if I had but feign,
Or make my grief much greater than I need,
When-as the care to hide my burning pain,
With secret sighs constrains my heart to bleed:
Yet well I wot, be kill'd' I shall not be,
Until by death a proof hereof you see.
But if this lodge, the witness of my woe,
Whose stony walls enterr'dm my plaints contain,
Had sense to feel and tongue my pain to show,
Which he enclos'd, I utter all in vain,
You soon should know that most I make
Alone, if he that loves can be alone.
Why should I seek to make my shame be known,
That foolish love is causer of my pain?
Forgive me love, the speech is not mine own,
But so they speak that thee and thine disdain.
And I myself confess my skill too small
To plead for love, and clear myself withal.
What reason can my simple wit devise,
Why bootless grief should thus my mind afflict?
I love the thoughts, that Love itself despise;
I seek for that, I never look to find.
Oft have I heard, or which I think I die,
Thine angry tongue all kinds of love defy.
Yet is my life upon thy promise stay'd,
By which thou hast assur'd me of thy love;
And though thereby my heat be not allay'd,
No stay of flight, where gain is still above.
But since thy heart can yield to Love no more,
I rest content, although I die therefore.
Quis deus opposuit nostris sua numina votis?
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