SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

1554-1586.

LOVE IS DEAD.

RING out your bells, let mourning shews be spread,

For Love is dead!
All Love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain,
Worth, or not worth, rejected,
And faith fair scorn doth gain.

From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female frenzy,
From them that use men thus,

Good Lord deliver us.

Weep, neighbours, weep, do you not hear it said

That Love is dead?
His death-bed peacock's folly,
His winding-sheet is shame,
His will, false seeming holy,
His sole executor blame.

From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female frenzy,
From them that use men thus,

Good Lord deliver us.

Let dirge be sung, and trentals richly read,

For Love is dead,
And wrong his tomb ordaineth
My mistress marble heart;

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

Which epitaph containeth,
Her eyes were once his dart.

From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female frenzy,
From them that use men thus,

Good Lord deliver us.

Alas! I lie, rage has this error bred

Love's not dead.
Love is not dead but sleepeth
In her unmatched mind,
Where she his counsel keepeth
Till one desert she find.

Therefore from so vile fancy,
To call such wit a frenzy,
Who Love can temper thus,

Good Lord deliver us.

FRANCIS, LORD BACON.

1560 - 1626.

THE WORLD.

The world's a bubble, and the life of man

Less than a span;
In his conception wretched, from the womb,

So to the tomb;-
Cursed from his cradle, and brought up to years

With cares and fears.
Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns on water, or but writes in dust.

Yet, whilst with sorrow here we live oppressed,

What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools,

To dandle fools;
The rural part is turned into a den

Of savage men:
And where's a city from foul vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?

Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed,

Or pains his head;
Those that live single take it for a curse,

Or do things worse:
These would have children ;-those that have them, moan,

Or wish them gone:
What is it, then, to have, or have no wife,
But single thraldom, or a double strife?

ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX.

Our own affections still at home to please,

Is a disease;
To cross the seas to any foreign soil,

Peril and toil;
Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease,

We're worse in peace:
What then remains, but that we still should cry,
For being born, and, being born, to die?

ROBERT. EARL OF ESSEX.

1567–1601.

SONNET.

THE ways on earth have paths and turnings known ;

The ways on sea are gone by needle's light;
The birds of th' air the nearest way have flown;

And under earth the moles do cast aright.
A way more hard than these I needs must take,

Where none can teach, nor no man can direct;
Where no man's good for me examples make;

But all men's thoughts do teach her to suspect. Her thoughts and mine such disproportion have,

All strength of love is infinite in me;
She uscth the advantage time and fortune gave

Of worth and power to get the liberty.
Earth, sea, heaven, hell, are subject unto laws,
But I, poor I, must suffer, and know no cause.

COME live with me, and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove That groves and vallies, hill and field, Woods and steepy mountains yield.