39

WHY FLOWERS CHANGE COLOR

THESE fresh beauties, we can prove, Once were virgins sick of love, Turn'd to flowers. Still in some Colors go, and colors come.

40

HIS REQUEST TO JULIA

JULIA, if I chance to die
Ere I print my poetry,
I most humbly thee desire
To commit it to the fire:
Better 't were my book were dead
Than to live not perfected.

41

DELIGHT IN DISORDER

A SWEET disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction,

An erring lace which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher;
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbons to flow confusedly,

A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat,

A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility,

Do more bewitch me than when art
Is too precise in every part.

42

TO HIS MUSE

WERE I to give the baptism, I would choose To christen thee, the bride, the bashful

muse,

Or muse of roses; since that name does fit Best with those virgin verses thou hast

writ,

Which are so clean, so chaste, as none may fear

Cato the censor, should he scan each here.

43

TO DEAN BOURN, A RUDE RIVER IN DEVON, BY WHICH SOMETIMES HE LIVED

DEAN BOURN, farewell; I never look to see Dean, or thy watery incivility.

Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy

streams

And makes them frantic even to all ex

tremes,

To my content I never should behold, Were thy streams silver, or thy rocks all gold.

Rocky thou art, and rocky we discover
Thy men, and rocky are thy ways all over.
O men, O manners, now and ever known
To be a rocky generation!

A people currish, churlish as the seas,
And rude almost as rudest savages,

With whom I did, and may re-sojourn when
Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men.

44

TO JULIA

How rich and pleasing thou, my Julia, art
In each thy dainty and peculiar part!
First, for thy queenship, on thy head is set
Of flowers a sweet commingled coronet.
About thy neck a carcanet is bound,
Made of the ruby, pearl, and diamond.
A golden ring that shines upon thy thumb;
About thy wrist, the rich dardanium.
Between thy breasts (than down of swans
more white)

There plays the sapphire with the chrysolite.

No part besides must of thyself be known, But by the topaz, opal, calcedon.

45

TO LAURELS

A FUNERAL stone,

Or verse I covet none,

But only crave

Of you that I may have

A sacred laurel springing from my grave,
Which being seen,

Blest with perpetual green,
May grow to be

Not so much call'd a tree

As the eternal monument of me.

46

AMBITION

IN man ambition is the commonest thing: Each one by nature loves to be a king.

47

THE BAG OF THE BEE

ABOUT the sweet bag of a bee

Two cupids fell at odds,

And whose the pretty prize should be
They vow'd to ask the gods.

Which Venus hearing, thither came,
And for their boldness stripp'd them,
And, taking thence from each his flame,
With rods of myrtle whipp'd them.

Which done, to still their wanton cries, When quiet grown she 'd seen them, She kiss'd, and wip'd their dove-like eyes, And gave the bag between them.

48

LOVE KILLED BY LACK

LET me be warm, let me be fully fed, Luxurious love by wealth is nourished. Let me be lean, and cold, and once grown poor,

I shall dislike what once I lov'd before.

49

BEING ONCE BLIND, HIS REQUEST TO BIANCHA

WHEN age or chance has made me blind, So that the path I cannot find,

And when my falls and stumblings are More than the stones i' th' street by far,

Go thou afore, and I shall well

Follow thy perfumes by the smell;