Or wilt thou drinke a cup of new-made wine,
Froathing at top, mixt with a dish of creame
And strawberries, or bilberries, in their prime,
Bath'd in a melting sugar-candie streame:
Bunnell and perry I have for thee alone,
When vynes are dead, and all the grapes are gone.
I have a pleasant noted nightingale,
That sings as sweetly as the silver swan,
Kept in a cage of bone as white as whale,
Which I with singing of Philemon wan:
Her shalt thou have, and all I have beside,
If thou wilt be my boy, or els my bride.
Then will I lay out all my lardarie
Of cheese, of cracknells, curds and clowted-creame,
Before thy malecontent ill-pleasing eye;
But why doo I of such great follies dreame?
Alas, he will not see my simple coate,
For all my speckled lambe, nor milk-white goate!
Against my birth-day thou shalt be my guest,
Weele have greene-cheeses and fine silly-bubs,
And thou shalt be the chiefe of all my feast,
And I will give thee two fine pretie cubs,
With two yong whelps, to make thee sport withall,
A golden racket, and a tennis-ball.
A guilded nutmeg, and a race of ginger,
A silken girdle, and a drawn-worke band,
Cuffs for thy wrists, a gold ring for thy finger,
And sweet rose-water for thy lilly-white hand;
A purse of silke, bespangd with spots of gold,
As brave a one as ere thou didst behold.
A paire of knives, a greene hat and a feather,
New gloves to put upon thy milk-white hand,
Ile give thee, for to keep thee from the weather,
With phœnix feathers shall thy face be fand,
Cooling those cheekes, that being cool'd wexe red,
Like lillyes in a bed of roses shed.
Why doo thy corall lips disdaine to kisse,
And sucke that sweete which manie have desired?
That baulme my bane, that meanes would mend my misse,
Oh, let me then with thy sweete lips b'inspired!
When thy lips touch my lips, my lips will turne
To corall too, and, being cold yce, will burne.
Why should thy sweete love-locke hang dangling downe,
Kissing thy girdle-stud with falling pride?
Although thy skin be white, thy haire is browne:
Oh, let not then thy haire thy beautie hide!
Cut off thy locke, and sell it for gold wier:
The purest gold is tryde in hottest fier.
Faire long-haire-wearing Absolon was kild,
Because he wore it in a braverie:
So that which gracde his beautie, Beautie spild,
Making him subject to vile slaverie,
In being hangd: a death for him too good,
That sought his owne shame and his father's blood.
Againe we read of old king Priamus,
The haplesse syre of valiant Hector slaine,
That his haire was so long and odious
In youth, that in his age it bred his paine:
For if his haire had not been halfe so long,
His life had been, and he had had no wrong.