That the star-gazers, having writ on death, May say, the plague is banish'd by thy breath.

'Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted, What bargains may I make, still to be sealing? To sell myself I can be well contented,

So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing: Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips,1 Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips.

'A thousand kisses buys my heart from me; And pay them at thy leisure, one by one. What is ten hundred touches unto thee? Are they not quickly told, and quickly gone? Say, for non-payment that the debt should double,

Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?'

Fair queen,' quoth he, if any love you owe me, Measure my strangeness 2 with my unripe years; Before I know myself, seek not to know me; No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears:

The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, Or, being early pluck'd, is sour to taste.

Look, the world's comforter, with weary gait, His day's hot task hath ended in the west:

Slips are counterfeit money.

Bashfulness.

The owl, night's herald, shrieks; 'tis very late;
The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest;
And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven's

If

light,

Do summon us to part, and bid good night.

Now let me say, Good night, and so say you; you will say so, you shall have a kiss.' 'Good night,' quoth she; and, ere he says, Adieu, The honey fee of parting tender'd is:

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace; Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face :

Till, breathless, he disjoin'd, and backward drew
The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth,
Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew,
Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drought:

He with her plenty press'd, she faint with dearth, (Their lips together glued) fall to the earth.

Now quick Desire hath caught the yielding prey,
And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth :
Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,

Paying what ransom the insulter willeth ;

Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so

high,

That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry :

And, having felt the sweetness of the spoil.
With blindfold fury she begins to forage;

Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil, And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage, Planting oblivion, beating reason back,

Forgetting shame's pure blush, and honor's

wreck.

Hot, faint, and weary with her hard embracing, Like a wild bird being tamed with too much handling;

Or as the fleet-foot roe, that 's tired with chasing, Or like the froward infant, still'd with dandling; He now obeys, and now no more resisteth, While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.

What wax so frozen but dissolves with tempering,
And yields at last to every light impression?
Things out of hope are compass'd oft with ven-
turing,

Chiefly in love, whose leave1 exceeds commission.

Affection faints not like a pale-faced coward; But then woos best, when most his choice is froward.

When he did frown, O, had she then gave over,
Such nectar from his lips she had not suck'd.
Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover:
What though the rose have prickles? yet 'tis

pluck'd.

Licentiousness

Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast.

Yet Love breaks through, and picks them all at last.

For pity now she can no more detain him;

The poor fool prays her that he may depart:

She is resolved no longer to restrain him;
Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart,
The which, by Cupid's bow she doth protest,
He carries thence encaged in his breast.

'Sweet boy,' she says, 'this night I'll waste in

sorrow,

For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch. Tell me, Love's master, shall we meet to-morrow? Say, shall we? shall we? wilt thou make the match? '

He tells her, no; to-morrow he intends

To hunt the boar with certain of his friends.

The boar!' quoth she; whereat a sudden pale,
Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose,
Usurps her cheek; she trembles at his tale,
And on his neck her yoking arms she throws:
She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck;
He on her belly falls, she on her back.

Now is she in the very lists of love,
Her champion mounted for the hot encounter:
All is imaginary she doth prove;

He will not manage her, although he mount her;

That worse than Tantalus' is her annoy,
To clip1 Elysium, and to lack her joy.

Even as poor birds, deceived with painted grapes,
Do surfeit by the eye, and pine the maw,
Even so she languisheth in her mishaps,

As those poor birds that helpless berries 2 saw :
The warm effects which she in him finds missing,
She seeks to kindle with continual kissing;

But all in vain good queen, it will not be:
She hath assay'd as much as may be proved;
Her pleading hath deserved a greater fee;
She's Love, she loves, and yet she is not loved.

Fie, fie!' he says: 'you crush me; let me go: You have no reason to withhold me so.'

Thou hadst been gone,' quoth she, 'sweet boy, ere

this,

But that thou told'st me, thou wouldst hunt the

boar.

O, be advised! thou know'st not what it is
With javelin's point a churlish swine to gore,

Whose tushes never-sheathed he whetteth still
Like to a mortal 3 butcher, bent to kill.

3

1 Embrace.

i. e. berries that afford no help or nourishment.
Deadly.