IGNOTO.

I LOVE thee not for sacred chastity.
Who loves for that? nor for thy sprightly wit:
I love thee not for thy sweet modesty,
Which makes thee in perfection's throne to sit.

I love thee not for thy enchanting eye,
Thy beauty ravishing perfection:
I love thee not for unchaste luxury,
Nor for thy body's fair proportion.

I love thee not for that my soul doth dance, And leap with pleasure when those lips of thine, Give musical and graceful utterance,

To some (by thee made happy) poet's line.

I love thee not for voice or slender small,
But wilt thou know wherefore? fair sweet for all,

'Faith wench! I cannot court thy sprightly eyes,
With the base viol placed between my thighs:
I cannot lisp, nor to some fiddle sing,
Nor run upon a high stretched minikin.

I cannot whine in puling elegies,
Intombing Cupid with sad obsequies:

I am not fashion'd for these amorous times,
To court thy beauty with lascivious rhymes:
I cannot dally, caper, dance and sing,
Oiling my saint with supple sonnetting:
I cannot cross my arms, or sigh aye me,
Aye me forlorn, egregious foppery!
I cannot buss thy fill, play with thy hair,
Swearing by love, thou art most debonnaire:
Not I by cock, but shall tell thee roundly,
Hark in thine ear, zounds I can (
soundly.

Sweet wench I love thee, yet I will not sue,
Or shew my love as musky courtiers do;

) thee

I'll not carouse a health to honour thee,
In this same bezzling drunken courtesy:
And when all's quaff'd, eat up my boosing glass,
In glory that I am thy servile ass.

Nor will I wear a rotten Bourbon lock,
As some sworn peasant to a female smock.
Well-featured lass, thou knowest I love thee dear,
Yet for thy sake I will not bore mine ear,
To hang thy dirty silken shoe-tires there:
Nor for thy love will I once gnash a brick,
Or some pied colours in my bonnet stick.

But by the chaps of hell to do thee good,
I'll freely spend my thrice decocted blood.

THE

FIRST BOOK OF LUCAN,

TRANSLATED BY C. MARLOWE.

VOL. II.

30

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

of

TO HIS KIND AND TRUE FRIEND,

EDWARD BLOUNT.

BLOUNT: I purpose to be blunt with you, and out my dulness to encounter you with a dedication in memory of that pure elemental wit Chr. Marlowe, whose ghost or genius is to be seen walk the churchyard in, at the least, three or four sheets. Methinks you should presently look wild now, and grow humorously frantic upon the taste of it. Well, lest you should, let me tell you: this spirit was sometime a familiar of your own, Lucan's first book translated; which, in regard of your old right in it, I have raised in the circle of your patronage. But stay now, Edward, if I mistake not, you are to accommodate yourself with some few instructions, touching the property of a patron, that you are not yet possessed of; and to study them for your better grace as our gallants do fashions. First, you must be proud and think you have merit enough in you, though you are never so empty; then when I bring you the book take physic, and keep state, assign me a time by your man to come again, and afore the day be sure to have changed your lodging; in the mean time sleep little, and sweat with the invention of some pitiful dry jest or two which you may happen to utter, with some little, or not at all, marking of your friends when you