Where we will ease us by disburd’ning them.

⌈They sit. Lodowick prepares to write⌉

Now, Lod‘wick, invocate some golden muse

To bring thee hither an enchanted pen

That may for sighs set down true sighs indeed,

Talking of grief, to make thee ready groan,

And when thou write’st of tears, encouch the word

Before and after with such sweet laments

That it may raise drops in a Tartar’s eye,

And make a flint-heart Scythian pitiful—

For so much moving hath a poet’s pen.

Then, if thou be a poet, move thou so

And be enriched by thy sovereign’s love.

For if the touch of sweet concordant strings

Could force attendance in the ears of hell,

How much more shall the strains of poets’ wit

Beguile and ravish soft and human minds?

LODOWICK

To whom, my lord, shall I direct my style?

KING EDWARD

To one that stains the fair and sots the wise,

Whose body is an abstract or a brief,

Contains each general virtue in the world.

‘Better than beautiful’, thou must begin,

Devise for fair a fairer word than ‘fair’,

And every ornament that thou wouldst praise,

Fly it a pitch above the soar of praise.

For flattery fear thou not to be convicted,

For were thy admiration ten times more,

Ten times ten thousand more the worth exceeds

Of that thou art to praise thy praise’s worth.

Begin; I will to contemplate the while.

Forget not to set down how passionate,

How heart-sick and how full of languishment

Her beauty makes me.

LODOWICK Write I to a woman?

KING EDWARD

What beauty else could triumph over me,

Or who but women do our love-lays greet?

What think’st thou I did bid thee praise? A horse?

LODOWICK

Of what condition or estate she is

’Twere requisite that I should know, my lord.

KING EDWARD

Of such estate that hers is as a throne,

And my estate the footstool where she treads.

Then mayst thou judge what her condition is

By the proportion of her mightiness.

Write on, while I peruse her in my thoughts.

⌈ ⌉

Her voice to music or the nightingale.

To music every summer-leaping swain

Compares his sunburnt lover when she speaks,

And why should I speak of the nightingale?

The nightingale sings of adulterate wrong

And that compare is too satirical,

For sin, though sin, would not be so esteemed,

But rather virtue sin, sin virtue deemed.

Her hair far softer than the silkworm’s twist,

Like to a flattering glass doth make more fair

The yellow amber—‘like a flattering glass’

Comes in too soon: for writing of her eyes

I’ll say that like a glass they catch the sun,

And thence the hot reflection doth rebound

Against my breast and burns my heart within.

Ah, what a world of descant makes my soul

Upon this voluntary ground of love!

Come, Lod’wick: hast thou turned thy ink to gold?

If not, write but in letters capital

My mistress’ name, and it will gild thy paper.

Read, Lod’wick, read!

Fill thou the empty hollows of mine ears

With the sweet hearing of thy poetry!

LODOWICK

I have not to a period brought her praise.

KING EDWARD

Her praise is as my Love—both infinite,

Which apprehend such violent extremes

That they disdain an ending period.

Her beauty hath no match but my affection;

Hers more than most, mine most, and more than more;

Hers more to praise than tell the sea by drops—

Nay more!—than drop the massy earth by sands,

And sand by sand print them in memory.

Then wherefore talk’st thou of a period

To that which craves unended admiration?

Read. Let us hear.

LODOWICK (reading)

‘More fair and chaste than is the queen of shades’—

KING EDWARD (staying him)

That line hath two faults, gross and palpable.

Compar’st thou her to the pale queen of night,

Who, being set in dark, seems therefore light?

What is she when the sun lifts up his head

But like a fading taper, dim and dead?

My love shall brave the eye of heaven at noon,

And, being unmasked, outshine the golden sun!

LODOWICK

What is the other fault, my sovereign lord?

KING EDWARD

Read o’er the line again.

LODOWICK (reading) ‘More fair and chaste’—

KING EDWARD (staying him)

I did not bid thee talk of chastity,

To ransack so the treasure of her mind,

For I had rather have her chased than chaste!

Out with the moon line! I will none of it.

And let me have her likened to the sun-

Say she hath thrice more splendour than the sun,

That her perfections emulates the sun,

That she breeds sweets as plenteous as the sun,

That she doth thaw cold winter like the sun,

That she doth cheer fresh summer like the sun,

That she doth dazzle gazers like the sun,