Or monarchs' hands, that let not bounty fall Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.
Of folded schedules had she many a one, Which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and flood;
Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone,
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet more letters sadly penn'd in blood,
With sleided1 silk feat and affectedly
Enswathed, and seal'd to curious secresy.
These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kiss'd, and often 'gan to tear :
Cried, O false blood! thou register of lies,
What unapproved witness dost thou bear!
Ink would have seem'd more black and damned
This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,
Big discontent so breaking their contents.
A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,
Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest hours, observed as they flew ;
Towards this afflicted fancy 3 fastly drew;
And, privileged by age, desires to know,
In brief, the grounds and motives of her woe.
2 i. e. curiously, nicely.
this afflicted love-sick lady
So slides he down upon his grained bat,1
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide :
If that from him there may be aught applied,
Which may her suffering ecstasy 2 assuage,
'Tis promised, in the charity of age.
Father,' she says, ' though in me you behold
The injury of many a blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgment I am old;
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power:
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied
Love to myself, and to no love beside.
'But, woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit (it was to gain my grace)
Of one by nature's outwards so commended,
That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face.
Love lack'd a dwelling, and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She was new lodged, and newly deified.
His browny locks did hang in crooked curls
And every light occasion of the wind
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls:
What's sweet to do, to do will aptly find.
Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind;
For on his visage was in little drawn,
What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.1
Small show of man was yet upon his chin; His phoenix down began but to appear,
Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin,
Whose bare outbragg'd the web it seem'd to wear:
Yet show'd his visage by that cost most dear;
And nice affections wavering stood in doubt
If best 'twere as it was, or best without.
His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved him, was he such a storm,
As oft 'twixt May and April is to see,
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be. His rudeness so with his authorised youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.
'Well could he ride, and often men would say,
That horse his mettle from his rider takes:
Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,
What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!'
And controversy hence a question takes,
Whether the horse by him became his deed,
Or he his manage by the well-doing steed.
But quickly on this side the verdict went; His real habitude life and grace
To appertainings and to ornament;
Accomplish'd in himself, not in his case:
All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,
Came for additions; yet their purposed trim
Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.
So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kind of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will;
That he did in the general bosom reign
Of young, of old; and sexes both enchanted,
To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain
In personal duty, following where he haunted:
Consents bewitch'd, ere he desire, have granted;
And dialogued for him what he would say,
Ask'd their own wills, and made their wills obey.
'Many there were that did his picture get, To serve their eyes, and in it put their mind; Like fools that in the imagination set
The goodly objects which abroad they find
Of lands and mansions, theirs in thought assign'd;
And laboring in more pleasures to bestow them, Than the true gouty landlord, which doth owe1
So many have, that never touch'd his hana,
Sweetly supposed them mistress of his heart:
My woful self, that did in freedom stand,
And was my own fee-simple, not in part ;-
What with his art in youth, and youth in art,
Threw my affections in his charmed power;
Reserved the stalk, and gave him all my flower.
• Yet did I not, as some my equals did,
Demand of him; nor, being desired, yielded;
Finding myself in honor so forbid,
With safest distance I mine honor shielded :
Experience for me many bulwarks builded
Of proofs new-bleeding, which remain'd the foil
Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.
But, ah! who ever shunn'd by precedent
The destined ill she must herself assay;
Or forced examples, 'gainst her own content,
To put the by-pass'd perils in her way?
Counsel may stop awhile what will not stay;
For when we rage, advice is often seen,
By blunting us, to make our wits more keen.
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