Love among the clouds did hover
Seeking where to spie a lover:
In the Court he none could find,
Townes too meane were in that kind,
At last as he was ripe to crying,
In Forrest woods he found one lying

Under-neath a tree fast sleeping,
Spirit of Love her body keeping,
Where the soule of Cupid lay
Though he higher then did stay,

Pray thee Diana tell mee, is it ill,
As some doe say, thou think'st it is, to love?
Me thinks thou pleased art with what I prove,
Since joyfull light thy dwelling still doth fill.

Thou seemst not angry, but with cheerefull smiles
Beholdst my Passions; chaste indeed thy face
Doth seeme, and so doth shine, with glorious grace;
For other loves, the trust of Love beguiles.

Be bright then still, most chast and cleerest Queene,

Dialogue
Sheapherd, and Sheapherdess
She: Deare how doe thy wining eyes
My sences wholy ty?
Sh 2: Sence of sight wherin most lies
Chang, and variety,
She: Chang in mee?
Sh 2: Choyse in thee some new delights to try;
She: When I chang, or chuse butt thee
Then changed bee mine eyes;
Sh 2: When you absent see nott mee
Will you nott breake thes tyes?

Silvesta:
Silent woods with desarts shade
Giving peace
Wher all pleasures first ar made
To increase,
Give your favor to my mone
Now my loving time is gone.

Chastity my pleasure is
Folly fled
From hence now I seeke my blis
Cross love dead,
In your shadows I repose
You then love I now have chose.

Musella:
Choise ill made were better left,
Beeing cross
Of such choise to bee bereft
Were no loss,

LOVE SONG

From the Icelandic

I was a sea-gull flying north
In the wrong season's
Distress; some fear had cast me forth
And some malfeasance.
The wind conveyed me past control;
My plumes were slanted;
To dash myself against the Pole
Was all I wanted.
My brain was frozen in my head,
My iris blinded;
To be destroyed and quickly dead
Was all I minded;
To dash my body on the ice
In shining splinters
And pile it with a century's
Contiguous winters.
I saw a lighthouse looking out

We travelled in the print of olden wars,
Yet all the land was green,
And love we found, and peace,
Where fire and war had been.

They pass and smile, the children of the sword —
No more the sword they wield;
And O, how deep the corn
Along the battle-field!1 From Travels with a Donkey .

Espilus . Silvanus long in love, and long in vain,
At length obtained the point of his desire,
When being asked, now that he did obtain
His wished weal, what more he could require:
" Nothing," said he, " for most I joy in this,
That goddess mine my blessed being sees."

Therion . When wanton Pan , deceived with lion's skin,
Came to the bed where wound for kiss he got,
To woe and shame the wretch did enter in,

IX

Him loved she. Lo, now was he veiled:
Over sea stood a swelled cloud-rack:
The fishing-boat havenward sailed,
Bent abeam with a whitened track,
Surprised, fast hauling the net,
As it flew: sea dashed, earth shook.
She said: Is it night? O not yet!
With a travail of thoughts in her look.
The mountain heaved up to its peak:
Sea darkened: earth gathered her fowl:
Of bird or of branch rose the shriek.
Night? but never so fell a scowl
Wore night, nor the sky since then

A WAKE thee, my lady-love,
— Wake thee and rise!
The sun through the bower peeps
— Into thine eyes!

Behold how the early lark
— Springs from the corn!
Hark, hark how the flower-bird
— Winds her wee horn!

The swallow's glad shriek is heard
— All through the air;
The stock-dove is murmuring
— Loud as she dare!

Apollo's winged bugleman
— Cannot contain,
But peals his loud trumpet-call
— Once and again!

Then wake thee, my lady-love —
— Bird of my bower!
The sweetest and sleepiest

VI

Within the surface of Time's fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder
With an earth-awakening blast
Through the caverns of the past:
(Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:)