Queen Mab and her light maids, the while,
Amongst themselves do closely smile,
To see the King caught with this wile,
With one another jesting:

And to the Fairy Court they went
With mickle joy and merriment,

Which thing was done with good intent,
And thus I left them feasting.

Ideas

SONNET 6

How many paltry foolish painted things, That now in coaches trouble every street, Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings, Ere they be well wrapped in their winding sheet!

Where I to thee eternity shall give, When nothing else remaineth of these days,

And queens hereafter shall be glad to live Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise. Virgins and matrons, reading these my rhymes,

Shall be so much delighted with thy story, That they shall grieve they lived not in these times,

To have seen thee, their sex's only glory: So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng,

Still to survive in my immortal song.

There's nothing grieves me,

should haste,

but that age

That in my days I may not see thee old, That where those two clear sparkling eyes are placed,

Only two loopholes then I might behold: That lovely, arched, ivory, polished brow Defaced with wrinkles, that I might but

see;

Thy dainty hair, so curled and crisped

now,

Like grizzled moss upon some aged tree; Thy cheek, now flush with roses, sunk and lean,

Thy lips with age as any wafer thin,
Thy pearly teeth out of thy head so clean,
That, when thou feed'st, thy nose shall
touch thy chin.

These lines that now thou scornst, which should delight thee,

Then would I make thee read, but to despite thee.

Sonnet 10

To nothing fitter can I thee compare Than to the son of some rich pennyfather,

Who, having now brought on his end with care,

Leaves to his son all he had heaped together.

This new rich novice, lavish of his chest, To one man gives, doth on another spend, Then here he riots, yet, amongst the rest, Haps to lend some to one true honest friend.

Thy gifts thou in obscurity dost waste, False friends thy kindness, born but to deceive thee;

Thy love that is on the unworthy placed; Time hath thy beauty, which with age will leave thee;

Only that little which to me was lent, I give thee back when all the rest is spent.

Your're not alone when you are still alone:

O God, from you that I could private be! Since you one were, I never since was

one;

Since you in me, my self since out of me, Transported from my self into your being, Though either distant, present yet to either;

Senseless with too much joy, each other seeing,

And only absent when we are together. Give me myself, and take yourself again; Devise some means but how I may forsake you;

So much is mine that doth with you remain,

That taking what is mine, with me I take you

You do bewitch me: O that I could fly From my self you, or from your own self I!