THREE VISIONS.

1591.

VISIONS

OF

THE WORLDS VANITIE.*

I.

ONE day, whiles that my daylie cares did sleepe,
My spirit, shaking off her earthly prison,
Began to enter into meditation deepe

Of things exceeding reach of common reason;
Such as this age, in which all good is geason,1
And all that humble is, and meane debaced,
Hath brought forth in her last declining season,
Griefe of good mindes, to see goodnesse disgraced!
On which when as my thought was throghly 2 placed,
Unto my eyes strange showes presented were,
Picturing that, which I in minde embraced,
That yet those sights empassion 3 me full nere.

1 Geason, rare.

3

2 Throghly, thoroughly. Empassion, move.

"Of the Visions of the World's Vanity we have nothing more to say than that they are tolerable exemplifications of their subject.". Retrospective Review.

Such as they were (faire Ladie) take in worth,

That when time serves may bring things better forth.

II.

In summers day, when Phoebus fairly shone,

I saw a Bull as white as driven snowe,
With gilden hornes embowed like the moone,
In a fresh flowring meadow lying lowe:
Up to his eares the verdant grasse did growe,
And the gay floures did offer to be eaten;
But he with fatnes so did overflowe,

That he all wallowed in the weedes downe beaten,
Ne car'd with them his daintie lips to sweeten:
Till that a Brize, a scorned little creature,
Through his faire hide his angrie sting did threaten,
And vext so sore, that all his goodly feature

And all his plenteous pasture nought him pleased:
So by the small the great is oft diseased.

III.

Beside the fruitfull shore of muddie Nile,
Upon a sunnie banke outstretched lay,
In monstrous length, a mightie Crocodile,
That, cram'd with guiltles blood and greedie pray
Of wretched people travailing that way,
Thought all things lesse than his disdainfull pride.
I saw a little Bird, cal'd Tedula,

The least of thousands which on earth abide,
That forst this hideous beast to open wide

The greisly gates of his devouring hell,

1 Embowed, bowed, bent.

2 Brize, a gadfly.

III. 7.— Tedula.] This is probably the bird called Trochilos by Herodotus, which, as he says, enters the mouth of the crocodile, and eats the leeches which are found clinging to its jaws.