and others.

1594

THE EIGHTH DECADE.

B

SONNET I.

ERSEVER ever, and have never done!
You weeping accent of my weary song!
O do not you eternal passions shun;

But be you true, and everlasting long!

Say that she doth requite you with disdain;
Yet fortified with hope, endure your fortune!
Though cruel now, she will be kind again;

Such haps as those, such love's as yours importune! Though she protests the faithfullest severity

Inexecrable beauty is inflicting;

Kindness, in time, will pity your sincerity!

Though now it be your fortune's interdicting.

For some can say, whose loves have known like passion, "Women are kind by kind, and coy for fashion."

SONNET II.

IVE period to my matter of complaining,
Fair Wonder of our time's admiring eye!
And entertain no more thy long disdaining,
Or give me leave, at last, that I may die!
For who can live, perpetually secluded

From death to life, that loathes her discontent ?
Less by some hope seducingly deluded,

Such thoughts aspire to fortunate event;
But I, that now have drawn mal-pleasant breath,
Under the burden of thy cruel hate;

O, I must long, and linger after death;
And yet I dare not give my life her date:
For if I die, and thou repent t'have slain me;

'Twill grieve me more, than if thou didst disdain me.

?, but before 1594

SONNET III.

WILL grieve me more than if thou didst disdain me,
That I should die; and thou, because I die so:
And yet to die, it should not know to pain me,
If cruel Beauty were content to bid so.

Death, to my life; life, to my long despair
Prolonged by her; given to my love and days:
Are means to tell how truly she is fair,
And I can die to testify her praise.
Yet not to die, though Fairness me despiseth,
Is cause why in complaint I thus persèver;
Though Death me and my love imparadiseth,
By interdicting me from her for ever.

I do not grieve that I am forced to die,
But die, to think upon the reason, "Why?"

SONNET IV.

Y TEARS are true: though Others be divine,
And sing of wars, and Troy's new rising frame;
Meeting heroic feet in every line,

That tread high measures in the Scene of Fame,
And I (though disaccustoming my Muse,

And sing but low songs, in an humble vein)
May one day raise my style, as others use;
And turn Elizon to a higher strain.
When reintombing from oblivious ages,

In better stanzas her surviving wonder:
I may opposed against the monster-rages
That part desert and excellence asunder:
That she, though coy, may yet survive to sec,
Her beauty's wonder lives again in me.

and others.

others.

SONNET V.

OMETIMES in verse I praised, sometimes in verse I

sigh't.

No more shall pen with love and beauty mell;
But to my heart alone, my heart shall tell

How unseen flames do burn it day and night.
Lest flames give light, light bring my love to sight,
And my love prove my folly to excel.

Wherefore my love burns like the fire of hell;
Wherein is fire, and yet there is no light.

For if one never loved like me; then why.

Skill-less blames he the thing he doth not know?
And he that so hath loved, should favour show;
For he hath been a fool as well as I.

Thus shall henceforth more pain, more folly have:
And folly past, may justly pardon crave.

A calculation upon the birth of an Honourable Lady's Daughter; born in the year 1588, and on a Friday.

[This Honourable Lady is believed to be Lady PENELOPE RICH, Sir P. SIDNEY'S STELLA. See p. 233, and Vol. I. p. 467.]

AIR by inheritance! whom born we see Both in the Wondrous Year, and on the day

Wherein the fairest Planet beareth sway;
The heavens to thee, this fortune doth
decree !

Thou of a world of hearts in time shall be
A Monarch great; and with one beauty's ray
So many hosts of hearts, thy face shall slay;
As all the rest, for love, shall yield to thee!

But even as ALEXANDER, when he knew

His father's conquests, wept; lest he should leave

No kingdom unto him for to subdue :

So shall thy mother, thee of praise bereave!

So many hearts already she hath slain;

As few behind to conquer shall remain.

FINIS.

DANIEL DEFOE.

The Education of Women.

[An Essay upon Projects. Written about 1692, but first printed in 1697.]

HAVE OFTEN thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day with folly and impertinence; while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves.

One would wonder, indeed, how it should happen that women are conversible at all; since they are only beholden to natural parts, for all their knowledge. Their youth is spent to teach them to stitch and sew, or make baubles. They are taught to read, indeed, and perhaps to write their names, or so; and that is the height of a woman's education. And I would but ask any who slight the sex for their understanding, what is a man (a gentleman, I mean) good for, that is taught no more? I need not give instances, or examine the character of a gentleman, with a good estate, of a good family, and with tolerable parts; and examine what figure he makes for want of education.

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond; and must be polished, or the lustre of it will never appear. And 'tis manifest, that as the rational soul distinguishes us from brutes; so education carries on the distinction, and makes some less brutish than others. This is too evident to need any demonstration. But why then should women be denied the benefit of instruction? If knowledge and understanding had been useless additions to the sex, GOD Almighty would never have given them capacities; for he made nothing