Around my Porch and lowly Casement spread,
The Myrtle never-sear, and gadding Vine,
With fragrant Sweet-Briar love to intertwine;
And in my Garden's box-encircled bed,
The Pansie pied, and Musk-Rose white and red,
The Pink and Tulip, and Honied Woodbine,
Fling odours round; the flaunting Eglantine
Decks my trim fence, 'neath which, by silence led,
The Wren hath wisely plac'd her mossy cell;
And, far from noise, in courtly land so rife,
Nestles her young to rest, and warbles well.
Here in this sale retreat and peaceful glen

The heaven is full of the moon's light,
The earth fades below.
In this vast empty world of night
I only know.

Pale-shining trees and moonlit fields,
The bird's tune,
And my night-flowering heart that yields
Her fragrance to the moon.

In th' Act of sinne the guilt of Conscience
Doth spoile our sport, sith our Soules (fainting) bleed:
For, that Worme feeds vpon our inward sense,
More than sinnes Manna outward sense doth feed.

But he on whom Gods glorious face doth shine,
The more his Griefes, the more his Ioyes abound:
For, who are drunke with diuine Pleasures Wine,
Can feel no Torments which the senses wound.

Then, 'ts a Torment nere to be tormented
In Vertues cause; nor, for Sinnes fowle default:
And, no worse Tempting, than nere to be tempted;

Those Colosseum fights eschew,
Avoid the fierce attack:
Else, going there with eyes of blue,
You'll come away with black.

I Grace inuoke, which had would make me pray,
To Thee (great Ladie, great and glorious to:)
I pray to Thee, as to a Comforts Staie,
Then, lett my comfort still bee tyde thereto
To Thee my whole Man is dyaphanall;
The Raies of whose Witts Eyes pierce through mee quite:
Who (like a Goddesse) seeth all in All
Which in me is, or Fowle, Faire, Wrong, or Right:
If ought be Faire or Right in mee, it is
Not mine, but Thine, whose Woorth possesseth mee:
But if ought fowle bee in mee, or amisse.
I hate for That, for that its not for Thee:

Sith Venus had her mole, Helen her stain,
Cynthia her spots, the Swan hath sable feet,
The clearest day some cloud, the smoothest plain
Some hole, or hillock, why should Phryna fret
When she is said to have a ruby nose,
Sith that is rich, and all her rareness shows?

Who makes the past, a pattern for next year,
Turns no new leaf, but still the same things reads,
Seen things, he sees again, heard things doth hear,
And makes his life but like a pair of beads.

A palace, when 'tis that, which it should be,
Leaves growing, and stands such, or else decays:
But he, which dwells there, is not so; for he
Strives to urge upward, and his fortune raise;

So had your body her morning, hath her noon,
And shall not better; her next change is night:
But her fair larger guest, to whom sun and moon

When we as ghosts inhabit history,
In reputation happy or forlorn,
Uncounted then shall all our quarrels be
As any dusty calendar outworn.

“They, with what wit they might, immortal dress
Devised for instant beauty ere they died.”
So shall we live, but shall not live by less;
O brief and bitter hearts, be pacified.

Bobby Shafto fat and fair
Would not comb her yellow hair;
Every morning just at eight
She bewailed her bitter fate.
Then the combs and brush would fly,
All the children going by
Stopped to listen to her cry,
Pretty Bobby Shafto!

Bobby Shafto fat and fair
Scorned to comb her yellow hair,
But just before she went to school,
She had to sit upon a stool
With her mamma close beside,
While those hateful ringlets dried
And poor Shafto sobbed and cried,
Pretty Bobby Shafto!

Bobby Shafto fat and fair
Said she'd cut her yellow hair,

By this bright river bordering the mead
Beflagged by reed and rush and willow tree,
Where dragon-flies across the water lead
The wingèd rout of noonday revelry,
I stand ecstatic, silent, with a brain
Bemused, as stand bemused the tawny kine,
And hear high summer sink and lift again
And feel its spirit stealing into mine.

Here when in winter-time the wild brooks brimmed
And with their salty flood annulled the earth,
Till with a lake the dreaming Down was rimmed,
And wandering water-beauty came to birth
With floating birds, and the green icy sky,