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A PRAYER:

TO THE FATHER OF HEAVEN.

O radiant luminary of light interminable,
Celestiall Father, potenciall God of might
Of heaven and earth. O Lorde incomperable

Of al perfections the essenciall most perfighte;
O Maker of mankind, that formed day and night,
Whose power imperial comprehendeth every place,
Mine hart, my mind, my thought, my hole delite
Is after this lyfe, to see thy glorious face.

Whose magnificence is incomprehensible,

Al arguments of reason which far doth excede,
Whose deity doutles is indivisible,

From whom al goodnes and vertue doth procede,
Of thy support al creatures have nede;

Assist me, good Lorde, and graunt me of thy grace
To live to thy pleasure in word, thought, and dede,
And after this lyfe to se thy glorious face.

TO THE SECOND PARSONE.

O benigne Jesu, my soverain lorde and kynge,
The only Sonne of God by filiacion,

The Second Parson without beginning,

Both God and man our faith maketh plain relacion-
Mary the mother by way of incarnacion-

Whose glorious passion our soules doth revive
Again al bodely and ghostly tribulacion,
Defend me with thy piteous woundes five.

O pereles prynce paynted to the death,
Rufully rent, thy body wan and blo,
For my redempcion gave up thy vytal breathe.
Was never sorow like to thy deadly wo.
Graunt me, out of this world when I shal go,
Thine endless mercy for my preservative
Against the world, the flesh, the devill also,
Defend me with thy piteous woundes fivc.

TO THE HOLY GHOST.

O firy sentence, inflaméd with all grace,

Enkyndeling hertes with brandes charitable,
The endlesse rewarde of pleasure and solace,

To the Father and the Son thou art communicable
In Unitate which is inseperable:

O water of lyfe, O wel of consolacion,

Against al suggestions deadly and dampnable
Rescu me, good Lorde, by thy preservacion.

To whome is appropryed the Holy Ghost by name,
The Third Parson one God in Trinite,

Of perfyt love thou art the ghostlye flame,
O mirrour of mekenes, peace, and tranquilitye;
My comfort, my counsel, my parfit charite.
O water of lyfe, O wel of consolacion,
Against al storms of hard adversitie
Rescu me, good Lorde, by thy preservacion.

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SIR THOMAS WYAT was born at Allington Castle, Kent, in 1503, and educated successively at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He returned from continental travel to take his place at the Court of Henry VIII., with whom his interest soon became proverbial. He was celebrated as a refined and accomplished scholar, and as the most elegant and universally-gifted gentleman of his time. He fell into disfavour," to quote the words of Fuller, "about the business of Queen Anne Bullen," and

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was committed to the Tower at the instance of the Duke of Suffolk, with whom he had quarrelled. Upon his enlargement he was appointed to a high military command, was knighted, and made high-sheriff of his county.

In 1537, Wyat was sent as ambassador to the Court of the Emperor Charles V.; and the observations he here made, and the counsels, founded upon them, which he gave to his own sovereign, sufficiently vindicate his political sagacity. Nevertheless, after his return he had to defend himself before a committee of the Council against certain malicious accusations of Bishop Bonner. These charges he successfully repelled.

Urged by his eagerness to execute a commission of considerable dignity and importance which had been entrusted to him, he overheated himself by hard riding in the summer of 1541, and, after a few days' illness, died of fever at Sherborne, Dorsetshire, in the thirty-eighth year of his age.

His muse was influenced by a too close study of the Italian poets. His erotic poetry, instead of the natural and the passionate, exhibits too frequently the frigid and attenuated. His style is often involved, and his vigour impaired by conceits. It is as a satirist and moralist that he holds his highest poetical position.

THAT PLEASURE IS MIXED WITH EVERY PAINE.

Venemous thornes that are so sharpe and kene,

Bear flowers we se full fresh and faire of hue;
Poison is also put in medicine,

And unto man his health doth oft renue;
The fire that all things eke consumeth clene,
May hurt and heale: then if that this be true,
I trust some time my harm may be my health,
Sins every woe is joynéd with some wealth.

HE RULETH NOT, THOUGH HE REIGNE OVER
REALMES, THAT IS SUBJECT TO HIS OWN
LUSTES.

If thou wilt mighty be, flee from the rage
Of cruell will, and see thou kepe thee free
From the foul yoke of sensual bondage;

For, though thine empire stretche to Indian sea,
And for thy fear trembleth the far Thylee,
If thy desire have over thee the power,
Subject then art thou, and no governour.

If to be noble and high thy mind be moved,
Consider well thy grounde and thy beginning,
For He that hath eche starre in heaven fixed,
And geves the moone her hornes and her eclipsing,
Alike hath made the noble in his working,

So that wretched no way may thou bee,
Except foule lust and vice doe conquer thee.

All were it so thou had a flood of gold,

Unto thy thirst yet should it not suffice;
And though with Indian stones, a thousand folde
More precious than can thyself devise,
Ycharged were thy backe; thy covetise
And busy byting yet should never let
Thy wretched life, ne do thy death profet.

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THIS patriarch of our didactic poets was born at the "fair village" of Rivenhall, in Essex; and was, as he tells us in his metrical autobiography, "of lineage good, of gentle blood." His father sent him as a chorister to Walling

ford College, where he complains of the constant sufferings he had to undergo from the punishments inflicted upon him. On account of his fine voice, he was pressed for the choir of St. Paul's, and attained to a considerable proficiency in music. From St. Paul's he was sent to Eton, where the celebrated Nicholas Udall entertained him with Latin phrases and fifty-three stripes by way of welcome. Tusser entered at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, but his studies were interrupted by ill health. He was introduced at Court by Lord Paget, and remained there, probably in a musical capacity, for ten years. At the end of this period his disgust at the vices and dissensions of the nobles about the young king, Edward VI., outweighed his expectations of advancement. He accordingly betook himself to the practice of agriculture successively at Ratwood, in Suffolk, at Ipswich, and at West Dereham. At Norwich we find him, after a time, officiating as a member of the cathedral choir. Throughout his various migrations and his desultory occupations he continued faithful to the faculty of failure with which Nature had bounteously gifted him; and he died poor, in London, about the year 1580. He was buried at St. Mildred's Church, in the Poultry.

His quaint and not always untuneful poem, called "A Hundred Good Points of Husbandrie," has for its great object to incite to the pursuit of gain and godliness. No one has ever whispered that he did not practise the religious precepts he inculcated; but the falling off of his life from the thriftiness which he professed has been more than once a provocative to pleasantry :

"Tusser, they tell me, when thou wert alive,

Thou, teaching thrift, thyself couldst never thrive:

So, like the whetstone, many men are wont

To sharpen others when themselves are blunt."

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