THOUGH I be dead and buried, yet I have
(Living in you) court enough in my grave;
As oft as there I think myself to be,
So many resurrections waken me;
That thankfulness your favours have begot
In me, embalms me that I do not rot:
This season, as 'tis Easter, as 'tis spring,
Must both to growth and to confession bring
My thoughts disposed unto your influence; so
These verses bud, so these confessions grow;
First I confess I have to others lent
Your stock, and over-prodigally spent
Your treasure, for since I had never known
Virtue and beauty, but as they are grown
In I should not think or say they shine,
you,

HE

T

An

Ye

To

Th

No

As

Next I confess this my confession;

Pa

For 'tis some fault thus much to touch upon

Your praise to you, where half-rights, seem too

It

(So as I have) in any other mine;

much

And make your mind's sincere complexion blush.

Next I confess my impenitence; for I

Can scarce repent my first fault, since thereby
Remote low spirits, which shall ne'er read you,
May in less lessons find enough to do,
By studying copies, not originals;
Desunt cætera.

A LETTER TO THE LADY CARY, AND MRS. ESSEX RICH, FROM AMIENS. MADAM.

HERE, where by all All-saints invoked are, 'T were too much schism to be singular, And 'gainst good practice general to war.

Yet turning to saints, should my humility.
To other saint than you directed be,
That were to make
my schism heresy.

Nor would I be a convertite so cold,
As not to tell it; if this be too bold,
Pardons are in this market cheaply sold.

Where, because faith is in too low degree,
I thought it some apostleship in me

To speak things, which by faith alone I see;

That is, of you, who are a firmament
Of virtues, where no one is grown or spent ;
They are your materials, not your ornament.

Others, whom we call virtuous, are not so
In their whole substance; but their virtues

grow

But in their humours, and at seasons show.

For when through tasteless flat humility
In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see,
'Tis but his phlegm that's virtuous, and not he:

So is the blood sometimes; who ever ran
To danger unimportuned, he was than
No better than a sanguine-virtuous man.

So cloisteral men, who, in pretence of fear,
All contributions to this life forbear,
Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.

Spiritual choleric critics, which in all
Religions find faults, and forgive no fall,

T

Have through this zeal virtue but in their gall.

We are thus but parcel-gilt; to gold we are

grown,

When virtue is our soul's complexion;

A

Who knows his virtue's name or place, hath

none.

Virtue's but aguish,* when 'tis several,
By occasion waked and circumstantial;
True Virtue is soul, always in all deeds All.

This virtue thinking to give dignity
To your soul, found there no infirmity;
For your soul was as good Virtue as she.

She therefore wrought upon that part of you, Which is scarce less than soul, as she could do, And so hath made your beauty virtue too.

Hence comes it, that your beauty wounds not hearts,

As others, with profane and sensual darts,
But as an influence virtuous thoughts imparts.

But if such friends by the honour of your sight
Grow capable of this so great a light,
As to partake your virtues and their might,

What must I think that influence must do,
Where it finds sympathy and matter too,
Virtue and beauty of the same stuff as you?

Which is your noble worthy sister; she,
Of whom, if what in this my ecstasy

And revelation of both I see,

you

* Var. anguish.

I saould write here, (as in short galleries
The master at the end large glasses ties,
So to present the room twice to our eyes,)

So I should give this letter length, and say
Phat which I said of you; there is no way
From either, but by* the other, not to stray.

May therefore this be enough to testify
My true devotion, free from flattery;
He that believes himself, doth never lie.

TO THE COUNTESS OF SALISBURY.

AUGUST, 1614.

FAIR, great, and good, since seeing you we see What Heaven can do, what any earth can be; Since now your beauty shines, now when the sun, Grown stale, is to so low a value run, That his dishevelled beams and scattered fires Serve but for ladies' periwigs and tiars In lover's sonnets; you come to repair God's book of creatures, teaching what is fair.

* Var. to.