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How mighty men made foul successless war
Against the gods and state of Jupiter;

How Phorcyas' 'ympe, that was so trick and

fair

That tangled Neptune in her golden hair,
Became a Gorgon for her lewd misdeed,-
A pretty fable, Paris, for to read,

A piece of cunning, trust me, for the nones,
That wealth and beauty alter men to stones;
How Salmacis, resembling idleness,

Turns men to women all through wantonness;
How Pluto raught Queen Ceres' daughter thence,
And what did follow of that love offence;
Of Daphne, turn'd into the laurel tree,
That shows a mirror of virginity;

How fair Narcissus tooting on his shade,

Reproves disdain, and tells how form doth vade;
How cunning Philomela's needle tells,

What force in love, what wit in sorrow dwells;
What pains unhappy souls abide in hell,

They say because on earth they liv'd not well,-
Ixion's wheel, proud Tantal's pining woe,
Prometheus' torment, and a many mo,

How Danaus' daughters ply their endless task,
What toil the toil of Sysiphus doth ask:

All these are old and known I know, yet, if thou

wilt have any,

Choose some of these, for, trust me, else none

hath not many.

Par. Nay, what thou wilt: but sith my cunning not compares with thine,

Begin some toy that I can play upon this pipe of mine.

En. There is a pretty sonnet, then, we call it Cupid's

Curse,

"They that do change old love for new, pray gods they change for worse!"

[They sing.

En. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be ;

The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.

Par. Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;

Thy love is fair for thee alone,
And for no other lady.

En. My love is fair, my love is gay,
And fresh as bin the flowers in May,
And of my love my roundelay,

My merry, merry, merry roundelay,
Concludes with Cupid's curse,—
They that do change old love for new,
Pray gods they change for worse.

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En. My love can pipe, my love can sing,
My love can many a pretty thing,
And of his lovely praises ring,

My merry, merry roundelays,

Amen to Cupid's curse,

They that do change old love for new,

Pray gods they change for worse!

Fair and fair, &c.

Both. Fair and fair, &c.

repeated.

To my esteemed friend, and excellent musician, V. N., Esq.

DEAR SIR,

I conjure you, in the name of all the sylvan deities, and of the Muses, whom you honour, and they reciprocally love and honour you,-rescue this old and passionate ditty-the very flower of an old forgotten pastoral, which had it been in all parts equal, the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher had been but a second name in this sort of writing-rescue it from the profane hands of every common composer; and in one of your tranquillest moods, when you have most leisure from those sad thoughts, which sometimes unworthily beset you; yet a mood, in itself not unallied to the better sort of melancholy; laying by for once the lofty organ, with which you shake the Temples; attune, as to the pipe of Paris himself, to some milder and more love-according instrument, this pretty courtship between Paris and his (then-not as yet-forsaken) Enone. Oblige me, and all more knowing judges of music and of poesy, by the adaptation of fit musical numbers, which it only wants to be the rarest love dialogue in our language. Your implorer,

C. L.

THE BATTLE OF ALCAZAR,
A TRAGEDY :

BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 1594.

MULY MAHAMET, driven from his throne into a desert, robs the lioness to feed his fainting wife CALIPOLIS.

Muly. Hold thee, Calipolis, feed, and faint no more;
This flesh I forced from a lioness,

Meat of a princess, for a princess meet :
Learn by her noble stomach to esteem
Penury plenty in extremest dearth;

Who, when she saw her foragement bereft,
Pin'd not in melancholy or childish fear,
But as brave minds are strongest in extremes,

So she, redoubling her former force,

Rang'd through the woods, and rent the breeding vaults

Of proudest savages to save herself.

Feed, then, and faint not, fair Calipolis;
For rather than fierce famine shall prevail
To gnaw thy entrails with her thorny teeth,
The conquering lioness shall attend on thee,
And lay huge heaps of slaughter'd carcases,
As bulwarks in her way, to keep her back,
I will provide thee of a princely osprey,
That as she flieth over fish in pools,
The fish shall turn their glistering bellies up,
And thou shalt take the liberal choice of all:
Jove's stately bird with wide commanding wings
Shall hover still about thy princely head,
And beat down fowl by shoals into thy lap :
Feed, then, and faint not, fair Calipolis.

[This address, for its barbaric splendour of conception, extravagant vein of promise, not to mention some idiomatic peculiarities, and the very structure of the verse, savours strongly of Marlowe ; but the real author, I believe, is unknown.]

THE LOVE OF KING
KING DAVID AND
FAIR BETHSABE, WITH THE
TRAGEDY OF ABSALOM:

BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 1599.

BETHSABE, with her maid, bathing. She sings: and DAVID sits above, viewing her.

The Song.

HOT sun, cool fire, temper'd with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair :
Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air, and ease me;
Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me, and please me :
Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning,
Make not my glad cause, cause of mourning,
Let not my beauty's fire

Inflame unstaid desire,

Nor pierce any bright eye
That wandereth lightly.

Bethsabe. Come, gentle Zephyr, trick'd with those perfumes

That erst in Eden sweeten'd Adam's love,
And stroke my bosom with the silken fan :
This shade, sun-proof, is yet no proof for thee;
Thy body, smoother than this waveless spring,
And purer than the substance of the same,
Can creep through that his lances1 cannot pierce :
Thou, and thy sister, soft and sacred Air,
Goddess of life, and governess of health,
Keep every fountain fresh and arbour sweet;
No brazen gate her passage can repulse,
Nor bushy thicket bar thy subtle breath:
Then deck thee with thy loose delightsome robes,
And on thy wings bring delicate perfumes,
To play the wantons with us through the leaves.
1 The sun's rays.

David. What tunes, what words, what looks, what wonders pierce

My soul, incensed with a sudden fire?

What tree, what shade, what spring, what paradise, Enjoys the beauty of so fair a dame?

Fair Eva, plac'd in perfect happiness,

Lending her praise-notes to the liberal heavens, Struck with the accents of archangels' tunes, Wrought not more pleasure to her husband's thoughts,

Than this fair woman's words and notes to mine.
May that sweet plain that bears her pleasant weight,
Be still enamell'd with discolour'd flowers;

That precious fount bear sand of purest gold;
And, for the pebble, let the silver streams
That pierce earth's bowels to maintain the source,
Play upon rubies, sapphires, chrysolites;
The brims let be embrac'd with golden curls
Of moss that sleeps with sound the waters make
For joy to feed the fount with their recourse;
Let all the grass that beautifies her bower
Bear manna every morn instead of dew,
Or let the dew be sweeter far than that

That hangs, like chains of pearl, on Hermon hill,
Or balm which trickled from old Aaron's beard.

Enter CUSAY.

See, Cusay, see the flower of Israel,

The fairest daughter that obeys the king
In all the land the Lord subdu'd to me;
Fairer than Isaac's lover at the well,

Brighter than inside bark of new-hewn cedar,
Sweeter than flames of fine perfumed myrrh,
And comelier than the silver clouds that dance
On Zephyr's wings before the King of Heaven.
Cusay. Is it not Bethsabe the Hethite's wife,
Urias, now at Rabath siege with Joab?

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