My hart the Anuile where my thoughts doe beate, My words the hammers fashioning my desire, My breast the forge, including all the heate, Loue is the fuell which maintaines the fire:...
Blacke pytchy Night, companyon of my woe, The Inne of care, the Nurse of drery sorrow, Why lengthnest thou thy darkest howres so, Still to prolong my long tyme lookt-for morrow?...
Sweete secrecie, what tongue can tell thy worth? What mortall pen sufficiently can prayse thee? What curious Pensill serues to lim thee forth? What Muse hath power aboue thy height to raise thee?...
The golden Sunne vpon his fiery wheeles The horned Ram doth in his course awake, And of iust length our night and day doth make, Flinging the Fishes backward with his heeles:...
Who list to praise the dayes delicious lyght, Let him compare it to her heauenly eye, The sun-beames to the lustre of her sight; So may the learned like the similie. The mornings Crimson to her lyps alike,...
Define my loue, and tell the ioyes of heauen, Expresse my woes, and shew the paynes of hell; Declare what fate vnlucky starres haue giuen, And aske a world vpon my life to dwell....
Since holy Vestall lawes haue been neglected, The Gods pure fire hath been extinguisht quite; No Virgin once attending on that light, Nor yet those heauenly secrets once respected;...
When I first ended, then I first began; The more I trauell, further from my rest; Where most I lost, there most of all I wan; Pyned with hunger, rysing from a feast....
Goe you, my lynes, Embassadours of loue, With my harts tribute to her conquering eyes, From whence, if you one tear of pitty moue For all my woes, that onely shall suffise....
In one whole world is but one Phoenix found, A Phoenix thou, this Phoenix then alone: By thy rare plume thy kind is easly knowne, With heauenly colours dide, with natures wonder cround....
Stay, stay, sweet Time; behold, or ere thou passe From world to world, thou long hast sought to see, That wonder now wherein all wonders be, Where heauen beholds her in a mortall glasse....
Vnto the World, to Learning, and to Heauen, Three nines there are, to euerie one a nine; One number of the earth, the other both diuine, One wonder woman now makes three od numbers euen....
Beauty sometime, in all her glory crowned, Passing by that cleere fountain of thine eye, Her sun-shine face there chaunsing to espy, Forgot herselfe, and thought she had been drowned....
Most good, most faire, Or Thing as rare, To call you's lost; For all the cost Words can bestow, So poorely show Vpon your prayse, That all the wayes Sense hath, come short:...
Must I needes write, who's hee that can refuse, He wants a minde, for her that hath no Muse, The thought of her doth heau'nly rage inspire, Next powerfull, to those clouen tongues of fire....
This while we are abroad, Shall we not touch our Lyre? Shall we not sing an ODE? Shall that holy Fire, In vs that strongly glow'd, In this cold Ayre expire?
The Muse should be sprightly, Yet not handling lightly Things graue; as much loath, Things that be slight, to cloath Curiously: To retayne The Comelinesse in meane, Is true Knowledge and Wit....
Douer, to doe thee Right, who will not striue, That dost in these dull yron Times reuiue The golden Ages glories; which poore Wee Had not so much as dream't on but for Thee?...
O thou fayre siluer Thames: O cleerest chrystall flood, Beta alone the Phenix is, of all thy watery brood, The Queene of Virgins onely she: And thou the Queene of floods shalt be:...
Tell me fayre flocke, (if so you can conceaue) The sodaine cause of my night-sunnes eclipse, If this be wrought me my light to bereaue, By Magick spels, from some inchanting lips...