She may be well compar'd

Unto the phenix kind,

Whose like was never seen nor heard, That any man can find.

In life she is Diana chaste,

In troth Penelope,

In word and eke in deed steadfast:
What will you more we say?

Her roseal colour comes and goes
With such a comely grace,

More ruddier too than doth the rose,

Within her lively face.

At Bacchus' feast none shall her meet,

Ne at no wanton play;

Nor gazing in an òpen street,

Nor gadding as a stray.

The modest mirth that she doth use

Is mix'd with shamefac'dness; All vice she doth wholly refuse,

And hateth idleness.

O Lord, it is a world to see

How virtue can repair,

And deck in her such honesty
Whom Nature made so fair!

Truly she doth as far exceed
Our women now-a-days,
As doth the gilly-flower a weed,
And more a thousand ways.

How might I do to get a graff
Of this unspotted tree?

For all the rest are plain but chaff
Which seem good corn to be.

This gift alone I shall her give :
When Death doth what he can,
Her honest fame shall ever live
Within the mouth of man.

The lover, accusing his love for her unfaithfulness, purposeth to live in liberty.

THE smoky sighs, the bitter tears

That I in vain have wasted,

The broken sleeps, the wo and fears,

That long in me have lasted,

The love, and all I owe to thee,
Here I renounce, and make me free.

The fruits were fair the which did grow
Within my garden planted,

I

The leaves were green of every bough,

2

And moisture nothing wanted;

Yet, or the blossoms 'gan [to] fall
The caterpillar wasted all.

Thy body was the garden-place,
And sugar'd words it beareth;
The blossoms all, thy faith it was,
Which, as the canker, weareth.

The caterpillar is the same

That hath won thee, and lost thy name.

That all things sometime find case of their pain, save only the lover.

I SEE there is no sort

Of things that live in grief,

Which at some time may not resort

Whereas they have relief.

The chased deer hath soil
To cool him in his heat;

'So ed. 1567.-Ed. I. "thy."
So ed. I.-Ed. 1567, " never."

The cony hath his cave,

The little bird his nest,

From heat and cold themselves to save

At all times as they list.

The owl, with feeble sight,
Lies lurking in the leaves;
The sparrow in the frosty night
May shroud her in the eaves.

But, wo to me, alas!

In sun, nor yet in shade,
I cannot find a resting-place
My burden to unlade.

The lover, that once disdained Love, is now become subject, being caught in his snare.

[The couplet printed in italics is said to have been written by Mary Queen of Scots with a diamond on a window of Fotheringay Castle: probably, as Warton suggests, a recollected passage from this poem. Vide Hist. E. Poet.'III. 56.]

To this my song give ear who list,

And mine intent judge as ye will;

The time is come that I have miss'd
The thing whereon I hoped still;
And from the top of all my trust
Mishap hath thrown me in the dust.

The time hath been, and that of late,
My heart and I might leap at large,
And was not shut within the gate

Of love's desire, nor took no charge
Of any thing that did pertain

As touching love, in any pain.

My thought was free, my heart was light,
I marked not who lost, who saught,
I play'd by day, I slept by night,

I forced not who wept, who laught;
My thought from all such things was free,
And I myself at liberty.

I took no heed to taunts nor toys,

As lief to see them frown as smile; Where Fortune laugh'd I scorn'd their joys, I found their frauds, and every wile; And to myself ofttimes I smii'd,

To see how Love had them beguil'd.