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MICHAEL DRAYTON

PLAIN-PATHED Experience, the unlearned's guide,
Her simple followers evidently shows
Sometimes what schoolmen scarcely can decide,
Nor yet wise reason absolutely knows ;

In making trial of a murder wrought,

If the vile actors of the heinous deed
Near the dead body happily be brought,

Oft 't hath been proved the breathless corse will
bleed ;

She coming near, that my poor heart hath slain,
Long since departed, to the world no more,
The ancient wounds no longer can contain,
But fall to bleeding, as they did before :
But what of this? Should she to death be led,
It furthers justice, but helps not the dead.

MICHAEL DRAYTON

SINCE there's no help, Come, let us kiss and part.
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me ;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart
That thus so clearly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes:

Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.

MICHAEL DRAYTON

TRUCE, gentle Love, a Parley now I crave,-
Methinks 'tis long since first these wars begun.
Nor thou, nor I, the better yet can have :
Bad is the match, where neither party won.
I offer free conditions of fair Peace,

My heart for hostage that it shall remain.
Discharge our forces, here let malice cease,
So for my pledge thou give me pledge again.
Or if no thing but death will serve thy turn,
Still thirsting for subversion of my state,
Do what thou canst, rage, massacre, and burn,
Let the world see the utmost of thy hate:
I send defiance, since if overthrown,

Thou vanquishing, the conquest is my own.

MARK ALEXANDER BOYDE

(1563-1601)

SONET 1

FRA bank to bank, fra wood to wood I rin
Ourhailit with my feeble fantasie;
Like til a leaf that fallis from a tree
Or til a reed ourblawin with the wind.
Twa gods guides me: the ane of them is blind,
Yea and a bairn brocht up in vanitie;
The next a wife ingenrit of the sea

And lichter nor a dauphin with her fin.
Unhappy is the man for evermair

That tils the sand and sawis in the air;
But twice unhappier is he, I lairn,

That feedis in his hairt a mad desire,

And follows on a woman throw the fire,
Led by a blind and teichit by a bairn.

1 From a printed fly leaf, now in the possession of Miss Boyd of Penkill. Copied by Mr. W. P. Ker. The spelling is here a little modernised.

JOSHUA SYLVESTER

(1563-1618)

THEY say that shadows of deceased ghosts
Do haunt the houses and the graves about,
Of such whose lives-lamp went untimely out,
Delighting still in their forsaken hosts:
So in the place where cruel love doth shoot

The fatal shaft that slew my love's delight, I stalk and walk and wander day and night, Even like a ghost with unperceived foot. But those light ghosts are happier far than I,

For at their pleasure they can come and go Unto the place that hides their treasure, so, And see the same with their fantastic eye;

Where1 I (alas) dare not approach the cruel
Proud monument that doth inclose my jewel.

1 Whereas,

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