Sonnets from The Unfortunate Traveller, (1594)
If I must die, oh let me choose my death:
Suck out my soul with kisses, cruel maid,
In thy breast's crystal balls embalm my breath,
Dole it all out in sighs when I am laid.
Thy lips on mine like cupping-glasses clasp,
Let our tongues meet and strive as they would sting,
Crush out my wind with one straight girting grasp,
Stabs on my heart keep time whilst thou dost sing.
Thy eyes like searing irons burn out mine,
In thy fair tresses stifle me outright;
Like Circe change me to a loathsome swine,
So I may live forever in thy sight.
Into heaven's joys none can profoundly see
Except that first they meditate on thee.
Fair room, the presence of sweet beauty's pride,
The place the Sun upon the earth did hold
When Phaeton his chariot did misguide:
The tower where Jove rained down himself in gold.
Prostrate, as holy ground I'll worship thee,
Our Lady's chapel henceforth be thou named;
Here first Love's Queen put on mortality,
And with her beauty all the world inflamed.
Heaven's chambers, harb'ring fiery cherubins,
Are not with thee in glory to compare:
Lightning it is, not light, that in thee shines,
None enter thee, but straight intrancéd are.
Or if Elysium be above the ground,
Then here it is, where nought but joy is found.
Poems by Robert Greene
Sephestia's Lullaby
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Mother's wag, pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy;
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and me,
He was glad, I was woe;
Fortune changéd made him so,
When he left his pretty boy,
Last his sorrow, first his joy.
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Streaming tears that never stint,
Like pearl-drops from a flint,
Fell by course from his eyes,
That one another's place supplies;
Thus he grieved in every part,
Tears of blood fell from his heart,
When he left his pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy.
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
The wanton smiled, father wept,
Mother cried, baby leapt;
More he crow'd, more we cried,
Nature could not sorrow hide:
He must go, he must kiss
Child and mother, baby bliss,
For he left his pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy.
Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
A winter landscape, from Philomelaes Second Oade
It was frosty winter season,
And fair Flora's wealth was geason.
Meads that erst with green were spread,
With choice flowers diap'réd,
Had tawny veils: cold had scanted
What the Spring and Nature planted.
Leafless boughs there might you see,
(All except fair Daphne's tree),
On their twigs no birds perched,
Warmer coverts now they searched,
And by Nature's secret reason
Trained their voices to the season,
With their feeble tunes bewraying
How they grieved the Spring's decaying.
Frosty Winter thus had gloomed
Each fair thing that Summer bloomed;
Fields were bare, and trees unclad,
Flowers withered, birds were sad.
A summer landscape, from Canzone
As then the Sun sat lordly in his pride,
Not shadowed with the veil of any cloud:
The welkin had no rack that seemed to glide,
No dusky vapour did bright Phoebus shroud:
No blemish did eclipse the beauteous sky
From setting forth Heaven's secret-searching eye.
No blustering wind did shake the shady trees,
Each leaf lay still and silent in the wood;
The birds were musical, the labouring bees
That in the summer heaps their winter's good
Plied to the hives sweet honey, from those flowers
Whereout the serpent strengthens out his powers.
The lion laid and stretched him in the lawns;
No storm did hold the leopard from his prey;
The fallow fields were full of wanton fawns;
The ploughswains never saw a fairer day:
For every beast and bird did take delight
To see the quiet heavens to shine so bright.
From Eurimachus in laudem Myrmidae his motto
When Flora proud in pomp of all her flowers
Sat bright and gay
And gloried in the dew of Iris' showers
And did display
Her mantle chequered all with gawdy green:
Then I
Alone
A mournful man in Erecine was seen.
With folded arms I trampled through the grass
Tracing as he
That held the throne of Fortune brittle glass
And love to be
Like Fortune fleeting, as the restless wind
Mixed
With mists
Whose damp doth make the clearest eyes grow blind.
The Grasshopper writes his epitaph, from A Conceited Fable of the olde Comedian Aesop
When Spring's green prime arrayed me with delight,
And ev'ry power with youthful vigour filled,
Gave strength to work whatever fancy willed,
I never feared the force of winter's spite.
When first I saw the Sun the day begin,
And dry the morning's tears from herbs and grass,
I little thought his cheerful light would pass,
Till ugly night with darkness entered in:
And then day lost I mourned, spring past I wailed,
But neither tears for this or that availed.
Then too too late I praised the emmet's pain,
That sought in spring a harbour 'gainst the heat,
And in the harvest gathered winter's meat,
Perceiving famine, frosts and stormy rain.
My wretched end may warn green-springing youth
To use delights as toys that will deceive,
And scorn the world, before the world them leave,
For all world's trust is ruin without ruth.
Then blest are they that, like the toiling ant,
Provide in time against the winter's want.