I MUST alledge, and thou canst tell
How faithfully I vow'd to serve :
And how thou seem'dst to like me well;
And how thou saidst I did deserve
To be thy lord, thy knight, thy king,
And how much more I list not sing.

And canst thou now,

thou cruel one,

Condemn desert to deep despair?

Is all thy promise past and gone?

Is faith so fled into the air?

If that be so, what rests for me,
But thus, in song, to say to thee?

If Cresside's name were not so known,
And written wide on every wall;
If bruit of pride were not so blown
Upon Angelica withall;

For hault disdain thou mightst be she,
Or Cresside for inconstancy.

And, in reward of thy desert,

I hope at last to see thee paid

With deep repentance for thy part,

Which thou hast now so lewdly play'd;. Medoro, he must be thy make,

Since thou Orlando dost forsake.

*

GEORGE TURBERVILLE,

One of the most celebrated sonneteers in this sonnet-making age, was born, probably about 1540. Being of a respectable family, and having acquired an early reputation for talents, he was employed as secretary by Randolph, during his mission to Russia. Here he wrote to his friends some very amusing poetical epistles, descriptive of the manners and customs of that country. They are to be found in Hakeluyt's Voyages, vol. I. p. 384, &c. On his return he published a volume of "Epitaphes, Epi66 grams, Songs, and Sonets, 1567 ;" and in 1576, another of "Tragical Tales." He also composed a translation of Ovid's Epistles, 1567, and of Mantuan's Ecl ogues, 1567, all of which were printed in duodecimo.

The Lover confesseth himself to be in Love, &c.

Ir banish'd sleep, and watchful care,

F

If mind affright with dreadful dreams,
If torments rife, and pleasure rare,

If face besmear'd with often streams,
If change of cheer from joy to smart,
If alter'd hue from pale to red,
If faltering tongue with trembling heart,
If sobbing sighs with fury fed,

If sudden hope by fear oppress'd,

If fear by hope suppress'd again,
Be proofs, that love within the breast

Hath bound the heart with fancy's chain

*

Then I, of force, no longer may

*

In covert keep my piercing flame,
Which ever doth itself bewray,

But yield myself to fancy's frame.

The Lover wisheth to be conjoined and fast linked with his Lady, never to sunder.

I READ how Salmacis, sometime, with sight
On sudden lov'd Cyllenus' son, and sought
Forthwith, with all her power, and forced might
To bring to pass her close-conceived thought:
Whom as by hap she saw in open mead,
She sued unto, in hope to have been sped.

With sugar'd words she woo'd and spar'd no speech, But boarded him with many a pleasant tale; Requesting him, of ruth, to be her leech,"

For whom she had abid such bitter bale :

Physician.

But he, replete with pride and scornful cheer,
Disdain'd her earnest suit and songs to hear.

Away she went; a woful, wretched wight,

And shrouded her, not far from thence, a space : When that at length the stripling saw in sight No creature there, but all were out of place, He shifts his robes, and to the river ran, And there to bathe him bare the boy began.

The nymph in hope as then to have attain'd
Her long-desired love, retir'd to flood,
And in her arms the naked noory1 strain❜d,
Whereat the boy began to strive a-good;"
But struggling nought availed in that plight,
For why? the nymph surpass'd the boy in might.

"O gods," quoth tho 3 the girl," this gift I crave, "This boy and I may never part again!

"But so our corpses may conjoined have, "As one we may appear; not bodies twain." The gods agreed; the water so it wrought, As both were one; thyself would so have thought.

A boy, probably from nourisson. Fr.

2 In earnest,

3 Then.