XLVI

THE LIFE ACCORDING TO NATURE

UNDER the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And turn his merry note

Unto the sweet bird's throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither!
Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

Who doth ambition shun

And loves to live i' the sun,

Seeking the food he eats

And pleased with what he gets,

Come hither, come hither, come hither:

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather.

SONNETS

Ω θεοὶ, τίς ἆρα Κύπρις, ἢ τίς Ιμερος

τοῦδε ξυνήψατο;

TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF

THESE INSUING SONNETS

MR. W. H. ALL HAPPINESSE

AND THAT ETERNITIE

PROMISED BY

OUR EVER-LIVING POET

WISHETH

THE WELL-WISHING

ADVENTURER IN

SETTING

FORTH

T. T.

1

TO HIS FRIEND, THAT HE SHOULD

MARRY

FROM fairest creatures we desire increase,

That thereby beauty's rose might never die,

But as the riper should by time decease,

His tender heir might bear his memory :

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies,

Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy spring,

Within thine own blood buriest thy content
And, tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding.

Pity the world, or else this glutton be,

To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

A REVIVAL

HEN forty winters shall besiege thy brow,

WHEN

And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held:

Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days,
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.

How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine Shall sum my count and make my old excuse,' Proving his beauty by succession thine !

This were to be new made when thou art old, And see thy blood warm when thou feel' st it cold,