• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

That may for sighs set down true sighs indeed,

Talking of grief, to make thee ready groan;

And when thou writest of tears, encouch the word

Before and after with such sweet laments,

That it may raise drops in a Tartar's eye,

And make a flintheart Scythian pitiful;

For so much moving hath a Poet's pen:

Then, if thou be a Poet, move thou so,

And be enriched by thy sovereign's love.

For, if the touch of sweet concordant strings

Could force attendance in the ears of hell,

How much more shall the strains of poets' wit

Beguile and ravish soft and humane minds?

LODOWICK.

To whom, my Lord, shall I direct my stile?

KING EDWARD.

To one that shames the fair and sots the wise;

Whose bod is an abstract or a brief,

Contains each general virtue in the world.

Better than beautiful thou must begin,

Devise for fair a fairer word than fair,

And every ornament that thou wouldest praise,

Fly it a pitch above the soar of praise.

For flattery fear thou not to be convicted;

For, were thy admiration ten times more,

Ten times ten thousand more the worth exceeds

Of that thou art to praise, thy praises worth.

Begin; I will to contemplate the while:

Forget not to set down, how passionate,

How heart sick, and how full of languishment,

Her beauty makes me.

LODOWICK.

Write I to a woman?

KING EDWARD.

What beauty else could triumph over me,

Or who but women do our love lays greet?

What, thinkest thou I did bid thee praise a horse?

LODOWICK.

Of what condition or estate she is,

Twere requisite that I should know, my Lord.

KING EDWARD.

Of such estate, that hers is as a throne,

And my estate the footstool where she treads:

Then maist thou judge what her condition is

By the proportion of her mightiness.

Write on, while I peruse her in my thoughts.—

Her voice to music or the nightingale—

To music every summer leaping swain

Compares his sunburnt lover when she speaks;

And why should I speak of the nightingale?

The nightingale sings of adulterate wrong,

And that, compared, is too satyrical;

For sin, though sin, would not be so esteemed,

But, rather, virtue sin, sin virtue deemed.

Her hair, far softer than the silk worm's twist,

Like to a flattering glass, doth make more fair

The yellow Amber:—like a flattering glass

Comes in too soon; for, writing of her eyes,

I'll say that like a glass they catch the sun,

And thence the hot reflection doth rebound

Against the breast, and burns my heart within.

Ah, what a world of descant makes my soul

Upon this voluntary ground of love!—

Come, Lodowick, hast thou turned thy ink to gold?

If not, write but in letters Capital

My mistress' name, and it will gild thy paper:

Read, Lord, read;

Fill thou the empty hollows of mine ears

With the sweet hearing of thy poetry.

LODOWICK.

I have not to a period brought her praise.

KING EDWARD.

Her praise is as my love, both infinite,

Which apprehend such violent extremes,

That they disdain an ending period.

Her beauty hath no match but my affection;

Hers more than most, mine most and more than more:

Hers more to praise than tell the sea by drops,

Nay, more than drop the massy earth by sands,

And sand by sand print them in memory:

Then wherefore talkest thou of a period

To that which craves unended admiration?

Read, let us hear.

LODOWICK.

'More fair and chaste than is the queen of shades,'—

KING EDWARD.

That line hath two faults, gross and palpable:

Comparest thou her to the pale queen of night,

Who, being set in dark, seems therefore light?

What is she, when the sun lifts up his head,

But like a fading taper, dim and dead?

My love shall brave the eye of heaven at noon,

And, being unmasked, outshine the golden sun.

LODOWICK.

What is the other fault, my sovereign Lord?

KING EDWARD.

Read o'er the line again.

LODOWICK.

'More fair and chaste'—

KING EDWARD.

I did not bid thee talk of chastity,

To ransack so the treasure of her mind;

For I had rather have her chased than chaste.

Out with the moon line, I will none of it;

And let me have her likened to the sun:

Say she hath thrice