Cupid is winged and doth range,
Her country so my love doth change: But change she earth, or change she sky, Yet will I love her till I die.
If I freely may discover
What would please me in my lover,
I would have her fair and witty,
Savouring more of court than city;
A little proud, but full of pity;
Light and humorous in her toying;
Oft building hopes and soon destroying ;
Long, but sweet in the enjoying ;
Neither too easy, nor too hard :
All extremes I would have barr'd.
She should be allowed her passions,
So they were but used as fashions;
Sometimes froward and then frowning,
Sometimes sickish and then swowning,
Every fit with change still crowning.
Purely jealous I would have her,
Then only constant when I crave her:
'Tis a virtue should not save her.
Thus nor her delicates would cloy me,
Neither her peevishness annoy me.
WHO is Silvia? What is she,
That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair and wise is she;
The heaven such grace did lend her. That she might admired be.
Is she kind as she is fair?
For beauty lives with kindness: Love doth to her eyes repair,
To help him of his blindness; And, being help'd, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling :
To her let us garlands bring.
BEAUTY clear and fair,
Where the air
Rather like a perfume dwells;
Where the violet and the rose
Their blue veins and blush disclose,
And come to honour nothing else:
Where to live near
And planted there
Is to live, and still live new ;
Where to gain a favour is
More than light, perpetual bliss,-
Make me live by serving you.
Dear, again back recall
To this light,
A stranger to himself and all!
Both the wonder and the story
Shall be yours, and eke the glory;
I am your servant, and your thrall.
MARK when she smiles with amiable cheer,
And tell me whereto can ye liken it—
When on each eyelid sweetly do appear
An hundred Graces as in shade to sit?
Likest it seemeth to my simple wit
Unto the fair sunshine in summer's day,
That, when a dreadful storm away is flit,
Through the broad world doth spread his goodly
ray:
At sight whereof each bird that sits on spray,
And every beast that to his den was fled,
Comes forth afresh out of their late dismay,
And to the light lift up their drooping head.
So my storm-beaten heart likewise is cheer'd
With that sunshine when cloudy looks are clear'd.
Spenser.
SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate :
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date :
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest :
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Shakespeare.
Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more where those stars light That downwards fall in dead of night; For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become as in their sphere.
Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
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