142.

143.

Dirge of the Three Queens

RNS and odours bring away!
Vapours, sighs, darken the day!

Our dole more deadly looks than dying;
Balms and gums and heavy cheers,
Sacred vials fill'd with tears,

And clamours through the wild air flying!

Come, all sad and solemn shows,
That are quick-eyed Pleasure's foes!
We convent naught else but woes.

Orpheus

? or John Fletcher.

ORPHEUS with his lute made trees

And the mountain tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.

Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

142. dole] lamentation.

? or John Fletcher.

convent] summon.

144.

can] knows.

The Phoenix and the Turtle

ET the bird of loudest lay

On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger,

Foul precurrer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict

Every fowl of tyrant wing
Save the eagle, feather'd king:

Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-divining swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow,

That thy sable gender mak'st

With the breath thou giv'st and takʼst,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence :-
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.

So they loved, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none;
Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder ; Distance, and no space was seen "Twixt the turtle and his queen: But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine,
That the turtle saw his right
Flaming in the phoenix' sight;
Either was the other's mine.

Property was thus appall'd,

That the self was not the same; Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was call'd.

Reason, in itself confounded,

Saw division grow together; To themselves yet either neither; Simple were so well compounded,

That it cried, 'How true a twain Seemeth this concordant one! Love hath reason, reason none If what parts can so remain.'

Whereupon it made this threne

To the phoenix and the dove, Co-supremes and stars of love, As chorus to their tragic scene.

THRENOS

BEAUTY, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,

Here enclosed in cinders lie.

145.

Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:
"Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be;
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair

That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

SHALL

Sonnets
i

HALL I compare thee to a Summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate : Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And Summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd: But thy eternal Summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

WHEN, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising-
Haply I think on thee: and then my state,
Like to the Lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with Kings.

WHEN to the Sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.