Parts those plots which besots

still asunder.

It is meet naught but sweet

Should come near that so rare

’tis a wonder.

No mis-shape, no scape

Inferior to nature’s perfection;

No blot, no spot:

She’s beauty’s queen in election.

9

Whilst I dreamt, I, exempt

From all care, seemed to share

pleasure’s plenty;

But awake, care take—

For I find to my mind

pleasures scanty.

Therefore I will try

To compass my heart’s chief contenting.

To delay, some say,

In such a case causeth repenting.

‘Upon a pair of gloves that master sent to his mistress’

The gift is small,

The will is all:

Alexander Aspinall

Poems from The Passionate Pilgrim

4

Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook

With young Adonis, lovely, fresh, and green,

Did court the lad with many a lovely look,

Such looks as none could look but beauty’s queen.

She told him stories to delight his ear,

She showed him favours to allure his eye;

To win his heart she touched him here and there—

Touches so soft still conquer chastity.

But whether unripe years did want conceit,

Or he refused to take her figured proffer,

The tender nibbler would not touch the bait,

But smile and jest at every gentle offer.

Then fell she on her back, fair queen and toward:

He rose and ran away—ah, fool too froward!

6

Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn,

And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade,

When Cytherea, all in love forlorn,

A longing tarriance for Adonis made

Under an osier growing by a brook,

A brook where Adon used to cool his spleen.

Hot was the day, she hotter, that did look

For his approach that often there had been.

Anon he comes and throws his mantle by,

And stood stark naked on the brook’s green brim.

The sun looked on the world with glorious eye,

Yet not so wistly as this queen on him.

He, spying her, bounced in whereas he stood.

‘O Jove,’ quoth she, ‘why was not I a flood?’

7

Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle,

Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty,

Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle;

Softer than wax, and yet as iron rusty;

A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her,

None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.

Her lips to mine how often hath she joined,

Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing.

How many tales to please me hath she coined,

Dreading my love, the loss whereof still fearing.

Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings

Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings.

She burnt with love as straw with fire flameth,

She burnt out love as soon as straw out burneth.

She framed the love, and yet she foiled the framing,

She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning.

Was this a lover or a lecher whether,

Bad in the best, though excellent in neither?

9

Fair was the morn when the fair queen of love,

Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove,

For Adon’s sake, a youngster proud and wild,

Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill.

Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds.

She, seely queen, with more than love’s good will

Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds.

‘Once,’ quoth she, ‘did I see a fair sweet youth

Here in these brakes deep-wounded with a boar,

Deep in the thigh, a spectacle of ruth.

See in my thigh,’ quoth she, ‘here was the sore.’

She showed hers; he saw more wounds than one,

And blushing fled, and left her all alone.

10

Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely plucked, soon faded—

Plucked in the bud and faded in the spring;

Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded;

Fair creature, killed too soon by death’s sharp sting,

Like a green plum that hangs upon a tree

And falls through wind before the fall should be.

I weep for thee, and yet no cause I have,

For why: thou left‘st me nothing in thy will,

And yet thou left’st me more than I did crave,

For why: I craved nothing of thee still.

O yes, dear friend, I pardon crave of thee:

Thy discontent thou didst bequeath to me.

12

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together:

Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;