THERE IS A GARDEN IN HER FACE

There is a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies grow;
A heavenly paradise is that place,
Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow;
There cherries grow which none may buy
Till "Cherry-Ripe" themselves do cry.

Those cherries fairly do enclose
Of orient pearl a double row,

Which when her lovely laughter shows,
They look like rose-buds filled with snow;
Yet them nor peer nor prince can buy
Till "Cherry-Ripe" themselves do cry.

Her eyes like angels watch them still;
Her brows like bended bows do stand,
Threatening with piercing frowns to kill
All that attempt with eye or hand
Those sacred cherries to come nigh
Till "Cherry-Ripe” themselves do cry.

About 1617.

5

ΙΟ

15

SIR HENRY WOTTON

THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE
How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill;

Whose passions not his masters are;

Whose soul is still prepared for death,

Untied unto the world by care

Of princes' grace or vulgar breath;

Who envieth none whom chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

5

ΙΟ

Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,

Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray

More of His grace than gifts to lend;

And entertains the harmless day

With a well-chosen book or friend.

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And, having nothing, yet hath all.

1614?

SIR JOHN DAVIES

FROM

ORCHESTRA

The sovereign castle of the rocky isle,

Wherein Penelope the princess lay,

Shone with a thousand lamps, which did exile

The dim dark shades and turned the night to day.

15

20

Not Jove's blue tent, what time the sunny ray

5

Behind the bulwark of the earth retires,
Is seen to sparkle with more twinkling fires.

That night the queen came forth from far within,
And in the presence of her court was seen;
For the sweet singer Phoemius did begin
To praise the worthies that at Troy had been:
Somewhat of her Ulysses, she did ween,

ΙΟ

In his grave hymn the heavenly man would sing,
Or of his wars, or of his wandering.

Pallas, that hour, with her sweet breath divine
Inspired immortal beauty in her eyes,

15

That with celestial glory she did shine

Brighter than Venus when she doth arise
Out of the waters to adorn the skies.
The wooers, all amazèd, do admire,
And check their own presumptuous desire.

Only Antinoüs, when at first he viewed

20

Her star-bright eyes, that with new honour shined,
Was not dismayed, but therewithal renewed

The noblesse and the splendour of his mind;

25

And as he did fit circumstances find,

Unto the throne he boldly 'gan advance,

And with fair manners wooed the queen to dance.

"Goddess of women, sith your heavenliness

Hath now vouchsafed itself to represent

30

To our dim eyes, which though they see the less,

Yet are they blest in their astonishment,
Imitate heaven, whose beauties excellent
Are in continual motion day and night,

And move thereby more wonder and delight.

35

"Let me the mover be, to turn about

Those glorious ornaments that youth and love
Have fixed in you, every part throughout;

Which if you will in timely measure move,

Not all those precious gems in heaven above

40

Shall yield a sight more pleasing to behold

With all their turns and tracings manifold."

With this, the modest princess blushed and smiled
Like to a clear and rosy eventide,

And softly did return this answer mild:
"Fair sir, you needs must fairly be denied
Where your demand cannot be satisfied.
My feet, which only nature taught to go,
Did never yet the art of footing know.

45

"But why persuade you me to this new rage?
For all disorder and misrule is new:
For such misgovernment in former age
Our old divine forefathers never knew;
Who if they lived, and did the follies view

50

Which their fond nephews make their chief affairs,
Would hate themselves, that had begot such heirs.”

55

"Sole heir of virtue and of beauty both,
Whence cometh it," Antinous replies,
"That your imperious virtue is so loath
To grant your beauty her chief exercise?

60

Or from what spring doth your opinion rise

That dancing is a frenzy and a rage,

First known and used in this new-fangled age?

"Dancing, bright lady, then began to be

When the first seeds whereof the world did spring-
The fire, air, earth, and water-did agree
By Love's persuasion, Nature's mighty king,
To leave their first disordered combating,
And in a dance such measure to observe
As all the world their motion should preserve.

65

70

“Since when, they still are carried in a round,
And, changing, come one in another's place;
Yet do they neither mingle nor confound,
But every one doth keep the bounded space
Wherein the dance doth bid it turn or trace.
This wondrous miracle did Love devise,
For dancing is Love's proper exercise."

FROM

NOSCE TEIPSUM

Are they not senseless, then, that think the soul
Naught but a fine perfection of the sense,
Or of the forms which fancy doth enroll
A quick resulting and a consequence?

1596.

75

What is it, then, that doth the sense accuse

5

Both of false judgments and fond appetites?

Which makes us do what sense doth most refuse?
Which oft in torment of the sense delights?

Sense thinks the planets' spheres not much asunder:
What tells us, then, their distance is so far?
Sense thinks the lightning born before the thunder:
What tells us, then, they both together are?

When men seem crows, far off upon a tower,

Sense saith, "They are crows!" What makes us think

them men?

When we, in agues, think all sweet things sour,

ΙΟ

15

What makes us know our tongue's false judgments then?

What power was that whereby Medea saw

And well approved and praised the better course,

When her rebellious sense did so withdraw

Her feeble powers as she pursued the worse?

Did sense persuade Ulysses not to hear

The mermaid's songs, which so his men did please As they were all persuaded, through the ear,

To quit the ship and leap into the seas.

Could any power of sense the Roman move

To burn his own right hand, with courage stout?
Could sense make Marius sit unbound and prove
The cruel lancing of the knotty gout?

Doubtless in man there is a nature found
Beside the senses and above them far;

Though "most men being in sensual pleasures drowned,

It seems their souls but in their senses are."

If we had naught but sense, then only they

Should have sound minds which have their senses sound;

But wisdom grows when senses do decay,

And folly most in quickest sense is found.

If we had naught but sense, each living wight
Which we call brute would be more sharp than we,

As having sense's apprehensive might

In a more clear and excellent degree.

35

40