And shading woods seem now my sun to dark;
And stately hills disdain to look so low.
The restful caves, now restless visions give;
In dales, I see each way a hard ascent;
Like late mown meads, late cut from joy I live ;
Alas, sweet brooks do in my tears augment.
Rocks, woods, hills, caves, dales, meads, brooks answer
Infected minds infect each thing they see.
F I COULD think how these my thoughts to leave;
Or thinking still my thoughts might have good end:
If rebel sense would reason's law receive;
Or reason foiled would not in vain contend:
Then might I think what thoughts were best to think;
Then might I wisely swim, or gladly sink.
If either you would change your cruel heart;
Or cruel still, time did your beauty stain;
If from my soul, this love would once depart;
Or for my love, some love I might obtain:
Then might I hope a change or ease of mind;
By your good help, or in myself to find.
But since my thoughts in thinking still are spent,
With reason's strife, by sense's overthrow;
You fairer still, and still more cruel bent;
I loving still a love, that loveth none:
I yield and strive; I kiss and curse the pain,
Thought, reason, sense, time, you and I maintain.
FT HAVE I mused, but now at length I find
Why those that die, men say, "they do depart."
"Depart!" A word so gentle, to my mind,
Weakly did seem to paint death's ugly dart.
But now the stars, with their strange course do bind
Me one to leave, with whom I leave my heart :
I hear a cry of spirits, faint and blind,
That parting thus, my chiefest part, I part.
Part of my life, the loathed part to me,
Lives to impart my weary clay some breath:
But that good part, wherein all comforts be,
Now dead, doth show departure is a death.
Yea, worse than death! Death parts both woe and joy.
From joy I part, still living in annoy.
INDING those beams, which I must ever love,
To mar my mind; and with my hurt, to please:
I deemed it best some absence for to prove,
If further place might further me to ease.
My eyes thence drawn, where lived all their light,
Blinded, forthwith in dark despair did lie:
Like to the mole, with want of guiding sight,
Deep plunged in earth, deprived of the sky.
In absence blind, and wearied with that woe;
To greater woes, by presence, I return:
Even as the fly, which to the flame doth go;
Pleased with the light, that his small corse doth burn,
Fair choice I have, either to live or die;
A blinded mole, or else a burnèd fly!
The Seven Wonders of England.
EAR Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found,
But so confused, that neither any eye
Can count them just; nor reason, reason try,
What force brought them to so unlikely ground?
To stranger weights, my mind's waste soil is bound.
Of Passion, hills; reaching to reason's sky;
From Fancy's earth, passing all numbers bound.
Passing all guess, whence into me should fly
So mazed a mass? or if in me it grows?
A simple soul should breed so mixèd woes.
The Bruertons have a lake, which when the sun
Approaching, warms-not else; dead logs up sends
From hideous depth: which tribute, when its ends;
Sore sign it is, the lord's last thread is spun.
My lake is Sense, whose still streams never run,
But when my sun her shining twins there bends;
Then from his depth with force, in her begun,
Long drowned Hopes to watery eyes it lends:
But when that fails, my dead hopes up to take;
Their master is fair warned, his will to make.
We have a fish, by strangers much admired,
Which caught, to cruel search yields his chief part:
(With gall cut out) closed up again by art,
Yet lives until his life be new required.
A stranger fish! myself, not yet expired,
Though rapt with Beauty's hook, I did impart
Myself unto th'anatomy desired:
Instead of gall, leaving to her, my heart.
Yet lived with Thoughts closed up; till that she will
By conquest's right, instead of searching, kill.
Peak hath a cave, whose narrow entries find
Large rooms within: where drops distil amain,
Till knit with cold, though there unknown remain,
Deck that poor place with alabaster lined.
Mine Eyes the strait, the roomy cave, my Mind;
Whose cloudy Thoughts let fall an inward rain
Of Sorrow's drops, till colder Reason bind
Their running fall into a constant vein
Of Truth, far more than alabaster pure!
Which, though despised, yet still doth Truth endure.
A field there is; where, if a stake be prest
Deep in the earth, what hath in earth receipt
Is changed to stone; in hardness, cold, and weight:
The wood above, doth soon consuming rest.
The earth, her Ears; the stake is my Request:
Of which how much may pierce to that sweet seat
To Honour turned, doth dwell in Honour's nest;
Keeping that form, though void of wonted heat:
But all the rest, which Fear durst not apply;
Failing themselves, with withered conscience, die.
Of ships, by shipwreck cast on Albion's coast,
Which rotting on the rocks, their death do die;
From wooden bones and blood of pitch doth fly
A bird, which gets more life than ship had lost.
My ship, Desire; with wind of Lust long tost,
Brake on fair cliffs of Constant Chastity:
Where plagued for rash attempt, gives up his ghost;
So deep in seas of Virtue's beauties lie.
But of this death, flies up a purest Love,
Which seeming less, yet nobler life doth move.
These wonders, England breeds. The last remains.
A lady, in despite of nature, chaste;
On whom all love, in whom no love is placed;
Where fairness yields to wisdom's shortest reins.
An humble pride, a scorn that favour stains;
A woman's mould, but like an angel graced;
An angel's mind, but in a woman cast;
A heaven on earth, or earth that heaven contains.
Now thus this wonder to myself I frame;
She is the cause, that all the rest I am.
To the tune of Wilhemus van Nassau, &c.
|