Pardon, sweete flower of matchles poetrye,
And fairest bud the red rose euer bare,
Although my muse, devorst from deeper care,
Presents thee with a wanton Elegie.
Ne blame my verse of loose unchastitye
For painting forth the things that hidden are,
Since all men act what I in speeche declare,
Onlie inducèd with varietie.
Complaints and praises, every one can write,
And passion out their pangs in statlie rimes;
But of loues pleasures none did euer write,
That have succeeded in theis latter times.Accept of it, deare Lord, in gentle parte,
And better lines, ere long shall honor thee.
The poem follows in about three hundred lines, and the manuscript ends with a second sonnet addressed by Nash to his patron:
Thus hath my penne presum’d to please my friend.
Oh mightst thou lykewise please Apollo’s eye.
No, Honor brookes no such impietie,
Yet Ovid’s wanton muse did not offend.
He is the fountaine whence my streames do flowe—
Forgive me if I speak as I was taught;
Alike to women, utter all I knowe,
As longing to unlade so bad a fraught.
My mynde once purg’d of such lascivious witt,
With purifièd words and hallowed verse,
Thy praises in large volumes shall rehearse.
That better maie thy grauer view befitt.
Meanwhile ytt rests, you smile at what I write
Or for attempting banish me your sight.Tho. Nash.
[388a] Daniel’s Certaine Epistles, 1603: see Daniel’s Works, ed. Grosart, i. 216 seq.
[388b] See Preface to Davies’s Microcosmos, 1603 (Davies’s Works, ed. Grosart, i. 14). At the end of Davies’s Microcosmos there is also a congratulatory sonnet addressed to Southampton on his liberation (ib. p. 96), beginning:
Welcome to shore, unhappy-happy Lord,
From the deep seas of danger and distress.
There like thou wast to be thrown overboard
In every storm of discontentedness.
[390] ‘Amours of J. D.’ were doubtless sonnets by Sir John Davies, of which only a few have reached us. There is no ground for J. P. Collier’s suggestion that J. D. was a misprint for M. D., i.e. Michael Drayton, who gave the first edition of his sonnets in 1594 the title of Amours. That word was in France the common designation of collections of sonnets (cf. Drayton’s Poems, ed. Collier, Roxburghe Club, p. xxv).
[391] See note to p. 88 supra.
[393a] The details of his career are drawn from Mr. Arber’s Transcript of the Registers of the Stationers’ Company.
[393b] Arber, ii. 124.