This is a mistake. The only edition that omits the lines (5-13) besides the first (1646) and substitutes these three is that of 1670.
Lines 5-13 not in 1646 edition: first appeared in 1648 edition.
" 14, 'choise' for 'rich.'
" 15, 'hoasts' for 'host.'
" 17, 'Ten thousand.'
" 20. Our text (1652) here and elsewhere misreads 'their:' silently corrected.
Line 22. Our text (1652) misprints 'their' for 'the:' as 'the' is the reading of 1648 and 1670, I have adopted it.
Line 24, 'the' for 'an.'
" 27, 'hand' for 'hands.'
" 37, 1648 edition has 'its' for 'his.'
" 44. Our text (1652) oddly misprints 'besom' for 'bosome:' the latter reading in 1646, 1648 and 1670 vindicates itself. 1646 reads 'her' and 1648 'its' for 'his.'
Line 50, 'comes' for 'come.'
" 51, 'wandring' for 'loytering.'
" 54. The allusion is to one of the names of Satan, viz. Baal-zebub = fly-god, dunghill-god.
Line 55, 'pleasures.'
" 57. Our text (1652) inadvertently drops 'in.' 1648 has 'i' th'.'
Line 59. Our text misprints 'spheares:' 1648 adopts 'spheare' from 1646 edition. 1670 misprints 'spear.'
Line 62, 'forswearing:' a classic word.
" 64, 'git' is the spelling.
" 65. All the editions save our text (1652) omit 'meanwhile.'
Line 66, 'the' for 'that.'
" 69, 'These' for 'Those,' by mistake.
" 78, 'doth' for 'does' I have adopted here.
" 83, 1648, by misprint, has 'O' for 'Of.'
" 84, 'An hundred thousand loves and graces.'
" 90. I have accepted 'hidden' before 'store' from 1646 edition.
Line 101. I have also adopted this characteristic line from 1646 edition. In all the others (except 1670) it is 'Selected dove.'
Line 107, 'soule' for 'indeed.'
" 114, 'that' for 'the.'
" 121-122. In 1648 printed as supra, the lines probably indicating a blank where the ms. was illegible. In our text (1652) we have two lines, but no blank indicated.
Line 124, 'soul' for 'proof.'
" 127, 'a' for 'her.' G.
TO THE SAME PARTY:
COVNCEL CONCERNING HER CHOISE.[45]
Dear, Heaun-designèd sovl!1
Amongst the rest
Of suters that beseige your maiden brest,
Why may not I
My fortune try5
And venture to speak one good word,
Not for my self, alas! but for my dearer Lord?
You have seen allready, in this lower sphear
Of froth and bubbles, what to look for here:
Say, gentle soul, what can you find10
But painted shapes,
Peacocks and apes;
Illustrious flyes,
Guilded dunghills, glorious lyes;
Goodly surmises15
And deep disguises,
Oathes of water, words of wind?
Trvth biddes me say 'tis time you cease to trust
Your soul to any son of dust.
'Tis time you listen to a brauer loue,20
Which from aboue
Calls you vp higher
And biddes you come
And choose your roome
Among His own fair sonnes of fire;25
Where you among
The golden throng
That watches at His palace doores
May passe along,
And follow those fair starres of your's;30
Starrs much too fair and pure to wait vpon
The false smiles of a sublunary sun.
Sweet, let me prophesy that at last t'will proue
Your wary loue
Layes vp his purer and more pretious vowes,35
And meanes them for a farre more worthy Spovse
Then this World of lyes can giue ye:
Eu'n for Him with Whom nor cost,
Nor loue, nor labour can be lost;
Him Who neuer will deceiue ye.40
Let not my Lord, the mighty Louer
Of soules, disdain that I discouer
The hidden art
Of His high stratagem to win your heart:
It was His heaunly art45
Kindly to cross you
In your mistaken loue;
That, at the next remoue
Thence, He might tosse you
And strike your troubled heart50
Home to Himself; to hide it in His brest:
The bright ambrosiall nest
Of Loue, of life, and euerlasting rest.
Happy mystake!
That thus shall wake55
Your wise soul, neuer to be wonne
Now with a loue below the sun.
Your first choyce failes; O when you choose agen
May it not be amongst the sonnes of men.
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
The first line, 'To Mistress M.R.
Dear, Heav'n-designed soul,'
as in 1670, is not to be considered as an unrhymed line, but as the address or superscription, though so contrived as not to interfere with the metre, but to make a five-foot line with the two feet of the true first line of the poem. So Parolles prefaces his verse with
'Dian, the count's a fool and full of gold.'