Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly; A flower that dies when first it gins to bud; A brittle glass that’s broken presently: A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, Lost,…
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare; Youth is full of sport, age’s breath…
Venus, with young Adonis sitting by her Under a myrtle shade, began to woo him: She told the youngling how god Mars did try her, And as he fell to her, so fell she to him. ‘Even thus,’ quoth she,…
Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck’d, soon vaded, Pluck’d in the bud, and vaded in the spring! Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded! Fair creature, kill’d too soon by death’s sharp sting! Like a green plum that hangs upon…
Fair was the morn when the fair queen of love, Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove, For Adon’s sake, a youngster proud and wild; Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill: Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds;…
If music and sweet poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great ‘twixt thee and me, Because thou lovest the one, and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose…
Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle; Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty; Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is brittle; Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty: A lily pale, with…
Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn, And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade, When Cytherea, all in love forlorn, A longing tarriance for Adonis made Under an osier growing by a brook, A brook…
If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love? O never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow’d: Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll constant prove; Those thoughts, to me like oaks, to thee like osiers…
Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook With young Adonis, lovely, fresh, and green, Did court the lad with many a lovely look, Such looks as none could look but beauty’s queen, She told him stories to delight his ear; She…
