With glowing eyen, tainted with blood and fire;

Whose waltring tongues did lick their hissing mouths.
We fled away; our face the blood forsook:

But they with gait direct to Lacon ran.
And first of all each serpent doth enwrap

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The bodies small of his two tender sons,

Whose wretched limbs they bit and fed thereon.

Then raught they him, who had his weapon caught
To rescue them, twice winding him about,
With folded knots and circled tails, his waist;
Their scaled backs did compass twice his neck,
With reared heads aloft and stretched throats.
He with his hands strave to unloose the knots
(Whose sacred fillets all besprinkled were
With filth of gory blood and venom rank),
And to the stars such dreadful shouts he sent,
Like to the sound the roaring bull forth lows,
Which from the altar wounded doth astart,
The swerving axe when he shakes from his neck.
The serpents twain, with hasted trail they glide
To Pallas' temple and her towers of height;
Under the feet of which, the goddess stern,
Hidden behind her target's boss, they crept.

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25

30

1557.

GEORGE GASCOIGNE

FROM

THE STEEL GLASS

But here methinks my priests begin to frown,
And say that thus they shall be overcharged,
To pray for all which seem to do amiss;
And one I hear, more saucy than the rest,
Which asketh me, “When shall our prayers end?"
I tell thee, priest, when shoemakers make shoes
That are well sewed, with never a stitch amiss,
And use no craft in utt'ring of the same;
When tailors steal no stuff from gentlemen;"
When tanners are with curriers well agreed,

5

ΙΟ

And both so dress their hides that we go dry;
When cutlers leave to sell old rusty blades,
And hide no cracks with solder nor deceit;

When tinkers make no more holes than they found;

When thatchers think their wages worth their work;
When colliers put no dust into their sacks;
When maltmen make us drink no fermenty;
When Davie Diker digs and dallies not;

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When smiths shoe horses as they would be shod;
When millers toll not with a golden thumb;
When bakers make not barm bear price of wheat;
When brewers put no baggage in their beer;
When butchers blow not over all their flesh;
When horse-coursers beguile no friends with jades;
When weaver's weight is found in huswives' web;
(But why dwell I so long among these louts?)
When mercers make more bones to swear and lie;
When vintners mix no water with their wine;
When printers pass none errors in their books;
When hatters use to buy none old cast robes;
When goldsmiths get no gains by soldered crowns;
When upholsters sell feathers without dust;
When pewterers infect no tin with lead;
When drapers draw no gains by giving day;
When parchmentiers put in no ferret silk;
When surgeons heal all wounds without delay.
Tush! these are toys; but yet my glass showeth all.

EPILOGUS

Alas, my lord, my haste was all too hot;
I shut my glass before you gazed your fill,
And, at a glimpse, my silly self have spied
A stranger troop than any yet were seen.
Behold, my lord, what monsters muster here,
With angel's face and harmful hellish hearts,
With smiling looks and deep deceitful thoughts,
With tender skins and stony cruel minds,
With stealing steps yet forward feet to fraud.
Behold, behold, they never stand content

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ΙΟ

With God, with kind, with any help of art,

But curl their locks with bodkins and with braids,
But dye their hair with sundry subtle sleights,

But paint and slick till fairest face be foul,

But bumbast, bolster, frizzle, and perfume.

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They mar with musk the balm which Nature made,
And dig for death in delicatest dishes.

The younger sort come piping on apace,

In whistles made of fine enticing wood,

Till they have caught the birds for whom they birded.
The elder sort go stately stalking on,

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And on their backs they bear both land and fee,
Castles and towers, revenues and receipts,
Lordships and manors, fines, yea farms and all.
What should these be? Speak you, my lovely lord.
They be not men; for why? they have no beards.
They be no boys, which wear such side long gowns.
They be no gods, for all their gallant gloss.
They be no devils, I trow, which seem so saintish.
What be they? women? masking in men's weeds,
With Dutchkin doublets and with jerkins jagged,
With Spanish spangs, and ruffs fet out of France,
With high-copped hats, and feathers flaunt-a-flaunt?
They be so sure, even wo to men indeed.

Nay, then, my lord, let shut the glass apace!
High time it were for my poor Muse to wink,
Since all the hands, all paper, pen, and ink
Which ever yet this wretched world possessed,
Cannot describe this sex in colors due!
No, no, my lord, we gazèd have enough;
And I too much, God pardon me therefor.
Better look off than look an ace too far;
And better mum than meddle overmuch.
But if my glass do like my lovely lord,
We will espy, some sunny summer's day,
To look again and see some seemly sights.
Meanwhile my Muse right humbly doth beseech
That my good lord accept this vent'rous verse,
Until my brains may better stuff devise.

1575-76.

1576.

THOMAS SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET

FROM

THE INDUCTION

The wrathful winter, 'proaching on apace,
With blust'ring blasts had all ybared the treen,
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierced the tender green;
The mantles rent, wherein enwrapped been

The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapets torn, and every bloom down blown.

The soil, that erst so seemly was to seen,
Was all despoilèd of her beauty's hue;

And soote fresh flowers, wherewith the summer's queen
Had clad the earth, now Boreas' blasts down blew;
And small fowls, flocking, in their song did rue

The winter's wrath, wherewith each thing defaced
In woeful wise bewailed the summer past.

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ΙΟ

Hawthorn had lost his motley livery;

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15

The naked twigs were shivering all for cold,

And dropping down the tears abundantly.

Each thing, methought, with weeping eye me told

The cruel season, bidding me withhold

Myself within; for I was gotten out
Into the fields, whereas I walked about.

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When lo, the Night, with misty mantles spread,
'Gan dark the day and dim the azure skies;
And Venus in her message Hermes sped
To bloody Mars, to will him not to rise,
Which she herself approached in speedy wise;
And Virgo, hiding her disdainful breast,
With Thetis now had laid her down to rest.

25

And pale Cynthea, with her borrowed light,
Beginning to supply her brother's place,
Was past the noonstead six degrees in sight,

30

When sparkling stars amid the heaven's face,
With twinkling light, shone on the earth apace,

That, while they brought about the Nightès chare,
The dark had dimmed the day ere I was ware.

35

And sorrowing I to see the summer flowers,
The lively green, the lusty leas, forlorn,
The sturdy trees so shattered with the showers,
The fields so fade that flourished so beforn,

It taught me well all earthly things be born

40

To die the death, for naught long time may last;

The summer's beauty yields to winter's blast.

Then, looking upward to the heaven's leams,

With nightès stars thick powdered everywhere,

Which erst so glistened with the golden streams

45

That cheerful Phoebus spread down from his sphere,
Beholding dark oppressing day so near,

The sudden sight reduced to my mind

The sundry changes that in earth we find.

That, musing on this worldly wealth in thought,
Which comes and goes more faster than we see
The flickering flame that with the fire is wrought,
My busy mind presented unto me

50

Such fall of peers as in this realm had be;

That oft I wished some would their woes descrive,
To warn the rest whom fortune left alive.

55

And straight, forth stalking with redoubled pace,

For that I saw the night drew on so fast,

In black all clad there fell before my face

A piteous wight, whom woe had all forwast:

60

Forth from her eyen the crystal tears outbrast;

And, sighing sore, her hands she wrung and fold,
Tare all her hair, that ruth was to behoid.

I stood aghast, beholding all her plight,
'Tween dread and dolour so distrained in heart
That, while my hairs upstarted with the sight,

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