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Were nought esteem'd, if, for these pains awarded,
My faithful love by her might be regarded.

Love the only price of Love.

THE fairest pearls that northern seas do breed,
For precious stones from eastern coasts are sold;
Nought yields the earth that from exchange is freed ;
Gold values all, and all things value gold.

Where goodness wants an equal change to make,
There greatness serves, or number place doth take.

No mortal thing can bear so high a price,

But that with mortal thing it may be bought; The corn of Sicil buys the western spice;

French wine of us, of them our cloth is sought.

No pearls, no gold, no stones, no corn, no spice,
No cloth, no wine, of love can pay the price.

What thing is love, which nought can countervail?
Nought save itself, ev'n such a thing is love.

All worldly wealth in worth as far doth fail,
As lowest earth doth yield to heav'n above.
Divine is love, and scorneth worldly pelf,

And can be bought with nothing, but with self.

Such is the price my loving heart would pay,
Such is the pay thy love doth claim as due.
Thy due is love, which I, poor I, essay,
In vain essay, to 'quite with friendship true:
True is my love, and true shall ever be,
And truest love is far too base for thee.

Love but thyself, and love thyself alone;
For, save thyself, none can thy love requite:
All mine thou hast, but all as good as none;

My small desert must take a lower flight.

Yet if thou wilt vouchsafe my heart such bliss,
Accept it for thy prisoner, as it is.

The Shepherd's Praise of his sacred Diana. PRAIS'D be Diana's fair and harmless light;

Prais'd be the dews, wherewith she moists the ground; Prais'd be her beams, the glory of the night;

Prais'd be her power, by which all powers abound!

Prais'd be her nymphs, with whom she decks the woods;
Prais'd be her knights, in whom true honour lives;
Prais'd be that force by which she moves the floods!
Let that Diana shine, which all these gives!

In heaven, queen she is among the spheres ;
She, mistress-like, makes all things to be pure;
Eternity in her oft-change she bears;

She, Beauty is; by her, the fair endure.

Time wears her not; she doth his chariot guide;
Mortality below her orb is plac'd;

By her the virtues of the stars down slide;
In her is Virtue's perfect image cast!

A knowledge pure it is her worth to know:
With Circes let them dwell that think not so!

The silent Loverf.

PASSIONS are likened best to floods and streams :
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
So, when affections yield discourse, it seems

The bottom is but shallow whence they come:
They that are rich in words must needs discover,
They are but poor in that which makes a lover.

f This has been much improved from a MS. copy in a very curious collection of contemporary poetry, among Dr. Rawlinson's MSS. in the Bodleian. It is there entitled "Sir Walter Ralegh to Queene Elizabeth."

Wrong not, sweet mistress of my heart!
The merit of true passion,

With thinking that he feels no smart,

Who sues for no compassion!

Since, if my plaints serve not to prove
The conquest of thy beauty,
They come not from defect of love,
But from excess of duty.

For, knowing that I sue to serve
A saint of such perfection,
As all desire, but none deserve
A place in her affection,

I rather choose to want relief
Than venture the revealing:
Where Glory recommends the grief,
Despair distrusts the healing!

Thus those desires that aim too high
For any mortal lover,

When Reason cannot make them die,
Discretion doth them cover.

Yet when Discretion doth bereave
The plaints that they should utter,
Then your Discretion may perceive
That Silence is a suitor.

Silence in love bewrays more woe

Than words, though ne'er so witty;
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
Deserveth double pitys!

This stanza was, by some strange anachronism, current about seventy years ago, among the circles of fashion, as the production of the late celebrated earl of Chesterfield.

Then misconceive not, dearest heart!

My true, though secret, passion;
He smarteth most that hides his smart,
And sues for no compassion!

A Vision upon the Fairy Queen.

METHOUGHT I saw the grave where Laura lay,
Within that temple where the vestal flame
Was wont to burn; and, passing by that way,
To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer V irtue kept:
All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen;

At whose approach the soul of Petrarch wept,
And, from thenceforth, those Graces were not seen :
For they this queen attended; in whose stead
Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse :
Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce:
Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
And curs'd the access of that celestial thief!

On the same.

THE praise of meaner wits this work like profit brings,
As doth the cuckoo's song delight, when Philomela sings;
If thou hast formed right true Virtue's face herein,
Virtue herself can best discern, to whom they written been.
If thou hast Beauty prais'd, let her sole looks divine,
Judge if ought therein be amiss, and mend it by her eyne.
If Chastity want ought, or Temperance her due,
Behold her princely mind aright, and write thy Queen anew.
Meanwhile she shall perceive, how far her virtues soar
Above the reach of all that live, or such as wrote of yore:
And thereby will excuse and favour thy good will;
Whose virtue cannot be express'd but by an angel's quill.

Of me no lines are lov'd, nor letters are of price,

Of all which speak our English tongue, but those of thy device.

The Lover's absence kills me, her presence kills me.
THE frozen snake oppress'd with heaped snow,
By struggling hard gets out her tender head,
And spies far off, from where she lies below,

The winter sun that from the north is fled.
But all in vain she looks upon the light,
Where heat is wanting to restore her might.

What doth it help a wretch in prison pent,
Long time with biting hunger overpress'd,
To see without, or smell within, the scent
Of dainty fare for others' tables dress'd?

Yet snake and prisoner both behold the thing,
The which (but not with sight) might comfort bring.

be;

Such is my taste, or worse, if worse may
My heart oppress'd with heavy frost of care,
Debarr'd of that which is most dear to me,
Kill'd up with cold, and pin'd with evil fare;
And yet I see the thing might yield relief,
And yet the sight doth breed my greater grief.

So Thisbe saw her lover through the wall,
And saw thereby she wanted that she saw :

And so I see, and, seeing, want withal,
And, wanting so, unto my death I draw.

And so my death were twenty times my friend,
If with this verse my hated life might end.

A Defiance to disdainful Love.

Now have I learn'd, with much ado at last,
By true disdain to kill desire;

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