And seem’st to joy in woe, in woe’s despite:
Tell me (so may thou milder fortune try,
And long, long sing!) for what thou thus complains,[[32]]
Since winter’s gone, and sun in dappled sky
Enamour’d smiles on woods and flow’ry plains?
The bird, as if my questions did her move,
With trembling wings sigh’d forth, ‘I love, I love.’
Or if a mixture of the Della Cruscan style be allowed to enshrine the true spirit of love and poetry, we have it in the following address to the river Forth, on which his mistress had embarked.
‘Slide soft, fair Forth, and make a chrystal plain,
Cut your white locks, and on your foamy face