A thousand favours from a maund she drew,
Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,
Which one by one she in a river threw,
Upon whose weeping margent she was set,
Like usury applying wet to wet,
Or monarchs’ hands, that lets not bounty fall
Where want cries ‘some,’ but where excess begs ‘all’.
Of folded schedules had she many a one,
Which she perus’d, sigh’d, tore and gave the flood;
Crack’d many a ring of posied gold and bone,
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet mo letters sadly penn’d in blood,
With sleided silk, feat and affectedly
Enswath’d, and seal’d to curious secrecy.
These often bath’d she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kiss’d, and often gave to tear;
Cried, ‘O false blood, thou register of lies,
What unapproved witness dost thou bear!
Ink would have seem’d more black and damned here!’
This said, in top of rage the lines she rents,
Big discontent so breaking their contents.
A reverend man that grazed his cattle nigh,
Sometime a blusterer, that the ruffle knew
Of court, of city, and had let go by
The swiftest hours observed as they flew,
Towards this afflicted fancy fastly drew;
And, privileg’d by age, desires to know
In brief the grounds and motives of her woe.
So slides he down upon his grained bat,
And comely distant sits he by her side,
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:
If that from him there may be aught applied
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
’Tis promised in the charity of age.
‘Father,’ she says, ‘though in me you behold
The injury of many a blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgement I am old,
Not age, but sorrow, over me hath power.
I might as yet have been a spreading flower,
Fresh to myself, if I had self-applied
Love to myself, and to no love beside.
‘But woe is me! Too early I attended
A youthful suit; it was to gain my grace;
O one by nature’s outwards so commended,
That maiden’s eyes stuck over all his face,
Love lack’d a dwelling and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She was new lodg’d and newly deified.
‘His browny locks did hang in crooked curls,
And every light occasion of the wind
Upon his lips their silken parcels hurls,
What’s sweet to do, to do will aptly find,
Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind:
For on his visage was in little drawn,
What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.
‘Small show of man was yet upon his chin;
His phoenix down began but to appear,
Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin,
Whose bare out-bragg’d the web it seemed to wear.
Yet show’d his visage by that cost more dear,
And nice affections wavering stood in doubt
If best were as it was, or best without.
‘His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet if men mov’d him, was he such a storm
As oft ’twixt May and April is to see,
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.
His rudeness so with his authoriz’d youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.