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| SWEET is the golden Cowslip bright and fair! | |
| Ten times more sweet, more golden, fair, and bright, | |
| Thy Tresses! in rich trammelled knots, resembling. | |
| VENUS’ swan’s back is lovely, smooth, and white! | |
| More lovely, smooth, and white his feathers are, | 5 |
| The silver lustre of thy Brows dissembling! | |
| Bright are the Sunbeams, on the water trembling! | |
| Much brighter, shining like love’s holy fire, | |
| On well watered diamonds of those eyes, | |
| Whose heat’s reflection, Love’s Affection tries! | 10 |
| Sweet is the Censer, whose fume doth aspire | |
| Appeasing LOVE, when for revenge he flies! | |
| More sweet the Censer, like thy seemly Nose! | |
| Whose beauty (than Invention’s wonder higher!) | |
| Nine times nine Muses never could disclose. | 15 |
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| Sweet Eglantine, I cannot but commend | |
| Thy modest rosy blush! pure, white, and red! | |
| Yet I thy white and red praise more and more | |
| In my sweet Lady’s Cheeks since they be shed. | |
| When Grapes to full maturity do tend, | 20 |
| So round, so red, so sweet, all joy before | |
| Continually I long for them therefore | |
| To suck their sweet, and with my lips to touch! | |
| Not so much for the Muses’ nectar sake, | |
| But that they from thy Lips their purpose take. | 25 |
| Sweet! pardon, though I thee compare to such. | |
| Proud Nature, which so white LOVE’s doves did make, | |
| And framed their lovely heads, so white and round. | |
| How white and round! It doth exceed so much, | |
| That nature nothing like thy Chin hath found! | 30 |
| |
| Fair Pearls, which garnish my sweet Lady’s neck: | |
| Fair orient pearls! O, how much I admire you! | |
| Not for your orient gloss, or virtue’s rareness, | |
| But that you touch her Neck, I much desire you! | |
| Whose whiteness so much doth your lustre check, | 35 |
| As whitest lilies the Primrose in fairness; | |
| A neck most gorgeous, even in Nature’s bareness. | |
| Divine Rosebuds, which, when Spring doth surrender | |
| His crown to Summer, he last trophy reareth; | |
| By which he, from all seasons, the palm beareth! | 40 |
| Fair purple crispèd folds sweet-dewed and tender; | |
| Whose sweetness never wears, though moisture weareth, | |
| Sweet ripe red Strawberries, whose heavenly sap | |
| I would desire to suck; but Loves ingender | |
| A nectar more divine in thy sweet Pap! | 45 |
| |
| O lovely tender paps! but who shall press them? | |
| Whose heavenly nectar, and ambrosial juice | |
| Proceed from Violets sweet, and asier-like, | |
| And from the matchless purple Fleur de luce. | |
| Round rising hills, white hills (sweet VENUS bless them!) | 50 |
| Nature’s rich trophies, not those hills unlike, | |
| Which that great monarch, CHARLES, whose power did strike | |
| From th’ Arctic to the Antarctic, dignified | |
| With proud Plus ultra: which Cerography | |
| In unknown Characters of Victory, | 55 |
| Nature hath set; by which she signified | |
| Her conquests’ miracle reared up on high! | |
| Soft ivory balls! with which, whom she lets play, | |
| Above all mortal men is magnified, | |
| And wagers ’bove all price shall bear away! | 60 |
| |
| O Love’s soft hills! how much I wonder you! | |
| Between whose lovely valleys, smooth and straight, | |
| That glassy moisture lies, that slippery dew! | |
| Whose courage touched, could dead men animate! | |
| Old NESTOR (if between, or under you! | 65 |
| He should but touch) his young years might renew! | |
| And with all youthful joys himself indue! | |
| O smooth white satin, matchless, soft, and bright! | |
| More smooth than oil! more white than lily is! | |
| As hard to match, as Love’s Mount hilly is! | 70 |
| As soft as down! clear, as on glass sunlight! | |
| To praise your white, my tongue too much silly is! | |
| How much, at your smooth soft, my sense amazed is! | |
| Which charms the feeling, and enchants the sight: | |
| But yet her bright, smooth, white, soft Skin more praisèd is! | 75 |
| |
| How oft have I, the silver Swan commended | |
| For that even chesse of feather in her wing! | |
| So white! and in such decent order placed! | |
| When she, the doly Dirge of Death did sing, | |
| With her young mournful cygnets’ train attended! | 80 |
| Yet, not because the milk-white wings her graced, | |
| But when I think on my Lady’s Waist, | |
| Whose ivory sides, a snowy shadow gives | |
| Of her well-ordered ribs, which rise in falling! | |
| How oft, the swan I pitied, her death calling, | 85 |
| With dreary notes! Not that she so short lives, | |
| And ’mongst the Muses sings for her installing; | |
| But that so clear a white should be disdained | |
| With one that for Love’s sugared torment lives! | |
| And makes that white a plague to lovers pained. | 90 |
| |
| O, how oft! how oft did I chide and curse | |
| The brethren Winds, in their power disagreeing! | |
| East, for unwholesome vapour! South, for rain! | |
| North, for, by snows and whirlwinds, bitter being! | |
| I loved the West, because it was the Nurse | 95 |
| Of FLORA’s gardens, and to CERES’ grain! | |
| Yet, ten times more than these, I did curse again! | |
| Because they are inconstant and unstable | |
| In drought! in moisture! frosty cold! and heat! | |
| Here, with a sunny smile! there, stormy threat! | 100 |
| Much like my Lady’s fancies variable! | |
| How oft with feet, did I the marble beat; | |
| Harming my feet, yet never hurt the stone! | |
| Because, like her, it was inpenetrable, | |
| And her heart’s nature with it, was all one? | 105 |
| |
| O that my ceaseless sighs and tears were able | |
| To counter charm her heart! to stone converted. | |
| I might work miracles to change again | |
| The hard to soft! that it might rue my pain. | |
| But of herself she is so straitly skirted | 110 |
| (Falsely reputing True Love, Honour’s Stain) | |
| That I shall never move, and never die, | |
| So many ways her mind I have exported! | |
| Yet shall I live, through virtue of her eye! | |
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