Beauty's Date

Beauty, sweet love, is like the morning

dew,

Whose short refresh upon the tender green Cheers for a time, but till the sun doth show,

And straight 't is gone, as it had never been.

Soon doth it fade that makes the fairest flourish,

Short is the glory of the blushing rose, The hue which thou so carefully dost nourish,

Yet which, at length, thou must be forced to lose,

When thou, surcharged with burthen of thy years,

Shall bend thy wrinkles homeward to the earth,

And that in Beauty's lease, expired, ap

pears

The date of age, the kalends of our death: But, ah! no more, this must not be foretold,

For women grieve to think they must

be old.
(B 325)

241

R

Care - charmer Sleep, son of the sable

Night,

Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish, and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care, return! And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth; Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn, Without the torment of the night's untruth. Cease, dreams, the images of day-desires, To model forth the passions of the mor

row;

Never let rising sun approve you liars, To add more grief to aggravate my sor

row.

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain,

And never wake to feel the day's disdain.

Epistle to the
Lady Margaret,
Countess of
Cumberland

He that of such a height hath built his mind,

And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,

As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame

Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same:
What a fair seat hath he, from whence

he may

The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey!

And with how free an eye doth he look down

Upon these lower regions of turmoil! Where all the storms of passions mainly

beat

On flesh and blood: where honour, power,

renown

Are only gay afflictions, golden toil; Where greatness stands upon as feeble feet As frailty doth; and only great doth seem To little minds, who do it so esteem.

He looks upon the mightiest monarchs'

wars

But only as on stately robberies;
Where evermore the fortune that prevails
Must be the right: the ill-succeeding mars
The fairest and the best-faced enterprise.
Great pirate Pompey lesser pirates quails:
Justice, he sees (as if seduced), still
Conspires with power, whose cause must
not be ill.

He sees the face of Right as manifold As are the passions of uncertain man; Who puts it in all colours, all attires, To serve his ends, and make his courses hold.

He sees, that let deceit work what it can, Plot and contrive base ways to high desires,

That the all-guiding providence doth yet All disappoint, and mocks this smoke of wit.

COUNTESS OF CUMBERLAND

Nor is he moved with all the thundercracks

Of tyrants' threats, or with the surly brow Of power, that proudly sits on others' crimes;

Charged with more crying sins than those he checks.

The storms of sad confusion, that may grow

Up in the present for the coming times, Appal not him; that hath no side at all, But of himself, and knows the worst can fall.

Although his heart, so near allied to earth,

Cannot but pity the perplexed state
Of troublous and distressed mortality,
That thus make way unto the ugly birth
Of their own sorrows, and do still beget
Affliction upon imbecility:

Yet seeing thus the course of things must

run,

He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done.

And whilst distraught ambition compasses,

And is encompassed; whilst as craft de

ceives,