[This beautiful poem was first printed in 1609, with our author's name, at the end of the quarto edition of his Sonnets.]
FROM off a hill, whose concave womb reworded
A plaintful story from a sistering vale,
My spirits to attend this double voice accorded,
And down I lay to list the sad-tuned tale :
Ere long espied a fickle maid full pale,
Tearing of papers, breaking rings atwain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.
Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcase of a beauty spent and done.
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of heaven's fell rage.
Some beauty peep'd through lattice of sear'd age.
Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,*
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season'd woe had pelleted ‡ in tears,
*Fanciful images. into pellets or balls.
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe,
In clamors of all size, both high and low.
Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride,*
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls
are tied
To the orb'd earth: sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every place at once, and no where fix'd,
The mind and sight distractedly commix'd.
Her hair, nor loose, nor tied in formal plat,
Proclaim'd in her a careless hand of pride;
For some, untuck'd, descended her sheaved † hat,
Hanging her pale and pined cheek beside:
Some in her threaden fillet still did bide;
And, true to bondage would not break from thence,
Though slackly braided in loose negligence.
A thousand favors from a maund‡ she drew,
Of amber, crystal, and of bedded 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 let not bounty fall
Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.
Of folded schedules had she many a one,
Which she perused, sigh'd, tore, and gave the flood; Crack'd many a ring of posied gold and bone,
*In allusion tc a piece of ordnance.
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet more letters sadly penn'd in blood,
With sleided silk feat† and affectedly
Enswathed, and seal'd to curious secresy.
These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kiss'd, and often 'gan 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, privileged 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,
ti. e. curiously, nicely.
i. e. this afflicted, love-sick lady.
Let it not tell your judgment 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)
Of one by nature's outwards so commended,
That maidens' 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 lodged, 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;
IIis phoenix down began but to appear,
Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin,
Whose bare outbragg'd the web it seem'd to wear :
Yet show'd his visage by that cost most dear;
And nice affections wavering stood in doubt
If best 'twere as it was, or best without.
'His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet, if men moved 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 authorized youth
Did livery falseness in a pride of truth.
'Well could he ride, and often men would say,
'That horse his mettle from his rider takes : Proud of subjection, noble by the sway,
What rounds, what bounds, what course, what stop he makes!'
And controversy hence a question takes,
Whether the horse by him became his deed,
Or he his manage by the well-doing steed.
'But quickly on this side the verdict went;
His real habitude gave life and grace
To appertainings and to ornament;
Accomplish'd in himself, not in his case:
All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,
Came for additions; yet their purposed trim
Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.
'So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kind of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the dialect and different skill,
Catching all passions in his craft of will;
"That he did in the general bosom reign
Of
young, of old; and sexes both enchanted,
To dwell with him in thoughts, or to remain
In personal duty, following where he haunted :
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