Song - Stay, Phoebus, Stay!
Stay, Phoebus, stay!
The world to which you fly so fast,
Conveying day
From us to them, can pay your haste
With no such object, not salute your rise
With no such wonder, as De Mornay's eyes.
Well does this prove
The error of those antique books,
Which made you move
About the world; her charming looks
Would fix your beams, and make it ever day,
Did not the rolling earth snatch her away.
To A Lady Singing A Song Of His Composing
Chloris! yourself you so excel,
When you vouchsafe to breathe my thought,
That, like a spirit, with this spell
Of my own teaching, I am taught.
That eagle's fate and mine are one,
Which, on the shaft that made him die,
Espied a feather of his own,
Wherewith he wont to soar so high.
Had Echo, with so sweet a grace,
Narcissus' loud complaints returned,
Not for reflection of his face,
But of his voice, the boy had burned.
Song: Go, Lovely Rose!
Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
Song - Say, Lovely Dream
Say, lovely dream, where couldst thou find
Shadows to counterfeit that face?
Colors of this glorious kind
Come not from any mortal place.
In heaven itself thou sure wert drest
With that angel-like disguise;
Thus deluded am I blest,
And see my joy with closed eyes.
But, ah, this image is too kind
To be other than a dream!
Cruel Sacharissa's mind
Never put on that sweet extreme.
Fair dream, if thou intend'st me grace,
Change that heavenly face of thine;
Paint despised love in thy face,
And make it to appear like mine.
Pale, wan, and meager let it look,
With a pity-moving shape,
Such as wander by the brook
Of Lethe, or from graves escape.
Then to that matchless nymph appear,
In whose shape thou shinest so,
Softly in her sleeping ear,
With humble words express my woe.
Perhaps from greatness, state, and pride,
Thus surprised she may fall:
Sleep does disproportion hide,
And, death resembling, equals all.
To Mr. Henry Lawes, Who Had Then Newly Set A Song Of Mine
Verse makes heroic virtue live;
But you can life to verses give.
As, when in open air we blow,
The breath, though strained, sounds flat and low;
But if a trumpet take the blast,
It lifts it high, and makes it last:
So in your airs and our numbers dressed,
Make a shrill sally from the breast
Of nymphs, who, singing what we penned,
Our passions to themselves commend;
While love, victorious with thy art,
Governs at once their voice and heart.
You, by the help of tune and time,
Can make that song which was but rhyme.
Noy pleading, no man doubts the cause;
Or questions verses set by Lawes.
As a Church window, thick with paint,
Lets in a light but dim and faint,
So others, with division, hide
The light of sense, the poet's pride;
But you alone may truly boast
That not a syllable is lost:
The writer's and the setter's skill
At once the ravished ears do fill.
Let those which only warble long,
And gargle in their throats a song,
Content themselves with
ut, re, mi
:
Let words, and sense, be set by thee.
