Else I with roses every day

Will whip you hence,

And bind you when

For your offence;

you long to play,

I'll shut my eyes to keep you in,

I'll make you fast it for

your sin,

I'll count your power not worth a pin;

Alas! what hereby shall I win,

If he gainsay me?

What if I beat the wanton boy

With many a rod,

He will repay me with annoy,
Because a god;

Then sit thou softly on my knee,
And let thy bower my bosom be;
Lurk in my eyes, I like of thee,

O Cupid! so thou pity me;
Spare not, but play thee.

Robert Greene.

[BORN 1560 (?). DIED 1592.]

MELICERTUS'S DESCRIPTION.

UNE on, my pipe, the praises of my love,
And midst thy oaten harmony* recount
How fair she is that makes my music mount,
And every string of my heart's harp to move.

Shall I compare her form unto the sphere,

Whence sun-bright Venus vaunts her silver shine? Ah, more than that by just compare is thine, Whose crystal looks the cloudy heavens do clear !

How oft have I descending Titan seen

His burning locks quench in the sea-queen's lap, And beauteous Thetis his red body wrap

In watery robes, as he her lord had been.

In the old poets this word is frequently used in the sense of melody.

When as my nymph, impatient of the night,
Bade bright Arcturus with his train give place,
Whiles she led forth the day with her fair face,
And lent each star a more than Delian light.

Not Jove nor Nature, should they both agree
To make a woman of the firmament
Of his mixed purity, could not* invent
A sky-born form so beautiful as she.

*Sic.

Samuel Danyell.

[BORN 1562. DIED 1619]

A CHARACTER OF LOVE.

OVE is a sickness full of woes,

All remedies refusing,

A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?

If we enjoy it, soon it dies;

If not enjoyed, it sighing cries
Hey ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting,

A heaven has made it of a kind,
Not well;-nor full, nor fasting.
Why so?

If we enjoy it, soon it dies;

If not enjoyed, it sighing cries
Hey ho!

TO DELIA.

NTO the boundless ocean of thy beauty, Runs this poor river, charged with streams of zeal,

Returning thee the tribute of my duty,

Which here my love, my youth, my plaints
reveal.

Here I unclasp the book of my charged soul,
Where I have cast th' accounts of all my care;
Here have I summed my sighs; here I enrol
How they were spent for thee; look what they are.
Look on the dear expenses of my youth,

And see how just I reckon with thine eyes:
Examine well thy beauty with my truth;

And cross my cares, ere greater cares arise.

Read it, sweet maid, though it be done but slightly; Who can show all his love, doth love but lightly.