Works

Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men,
Some have lov'd as old again....

Though beauty be the mark of praise,
And yours of whom I sing be such
As not the world can praise too much,
Yet 'tis your Virtue now I raise.

A virtue, like allay so gone...

Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know, for whom a tear you shed
Death's self is sorry.
'Twas a child that so did thrive
In grace and feature,...

Madame,

VVhil'st that, for which all vertue now is sold,
And almost every vice, almightie gold,
That which, to boote with hell, is thought worth heaven,...

'Tis growne almost a danger to speake true
Of any good minde, now: There are so few.
The bad, by number, are so fortified,
As what th'have lost t'expect, they dare deride....

On Salathiel Peavy, A Child of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel

Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know, for whom a tear you shed
Death's self is sorry....

Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbor give
To more virture than doth live.
...

Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know for whom a tear you shed,
Death's self is sorry.
'Twas a child that so did thrive
In grace and feature,...

Not to know vice at all, and keepe true state,
Is vertue, and not Fate:
Next, to that vertue, is to know vice well,
And her black spight expell.
Which to effect (since no brest is so sure,...

The trawl of unquiet mind drops astern

Great lucid streamers bar the sky ahead
(bifurcated banners at a tourney)
light alchemizes the brass on the bridge
into sallow gold
now the short northern...

In the ember days of my last free summer,
here I lie, outside myself, watching
the gross body eating a poor curry:
satisfied at what I have done, scared of what
I have to do in my last free winter.

Epitaphs I

Wouldst thou hear what Man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much Beauty as could die:
Which in life did harbour give...

The fairy beam upon you,
The stars to glister on you;
A moon of light
In the noon of night,
Till the fire-drake hath o'er gone you.
The wheel of fortune guide you
The boy with the bow beside you;...