HUMAN LIFE. To rain on me from eyes that love inspires. Your love, -vouchsafe it, royalhearted Few, And I will set no common price thereon, O, I will keep, as heaven his holy blue, Or night her diamonds, that dear treasure won. But aught of inward faith must I forego, Or miss one drop from truth's baptismal hand, Think poorer thoughts, pray cheaper Less worthy trust, to meet your Rebel to love in truth to love am I. INBORN ROYALTY. O THOU goddess, Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st In these two princely boys! They are as gentle As zephyrs, blowing below the violet, Not wagging his sweet head: and yet as rough, Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind, That by the top doth take the mountain pine, And make him stoop to the vale. 'Tis wonderful That an invisible instinct should frame them To royalty unlearned; honor untaught; Civility not seen from other; valor, That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop As if it had been sowed! SHAKSPEARE: Cymbeline. "Wel can the wise poet of Flor ence, That highté Dant, speken of this sentence: Lo, in such maner rime is Dante's tale. Ful selde upriseth by his branches smale Prowesse of man, for God of his goodnesse Will that we claime of him our gentillesse: For of our elders may we nothing claime But temporal thing, that man may hurt and maime. "Eke every wight wot this as wel as I, If gentillesse were planted naturelly Unto a certain linage down the line, Prive and apart, then wol they never fine To don of gentillesse the faire office, They mighten do no vilanie or vice. "Take fire and beare it into the derkest hous Betwixt this and the mount of Cau casus, And let men shut the dorés, and go thenne, Yet wol the fire as faire lie and brenne As twenty thousand men might it behold; His office naturel ay wol it hold, Here may ye see wel, how that Is not annexed to possession, For God it wot, men may full often find A lorde's son do shame and vilanie. And he that wol have prize of his genterie, For he was boren of a gentil house, And had his elders noble and virtu Either by chance, against the course of kind, Or through unaptnesse in the substance found, Which it assumed of some stubborne ground, That will not yield unto her form's direction, But is perform'd with some foul imperfection. SONNET. To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were, when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forest shook three summers' pride; Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned, In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned, Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green. Ah! yet doth beauty, like a dialhand, Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived; So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived. For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred, Ere you were born, was beauty's summer dead. SHAKSPEARE. TRUTH needs no color with his color fixed, Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay; But best is best, if never intermix'd. SHAKSPEARE. HYMN TO THE GRACES. WHEN I love, as some have told, HERRICK. |