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THE LOVER PROMISETH IMMORTALITY.

THE LOVER PROMISETH IMMORTALITY.

SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd:
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

W. Shakespeare.

LOVE IN ABSENCE,

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LOVE IN ABSENCE.

LIKE as the culver on the bared bough
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate,
And in her songs sends many a wishful vow
For his return, that seems to linger late;
So I alone, now left disconsolate,

Mourn to myself the absence of my love,

And wandering here and there all desolate,

Seek with my plaints to match that mournful dove.
Ne joy of aught that under heaven doth hove
Can comfort me, but her own joyous sight

Whose sweet aspect both god and man can move
In her unspotted pleasance to delight:
And in the heavens write your glorious name,
Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Edmund Spenser.

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THE NIGHTINGALE.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

As it fell upon a day

In the merry month of May,

Sitting in a pleasant shade

Which a grove of myrtles made,

Beasts did leap and birds did sing,

Trees did grow and plants did spring,
Every thing did banish moan
Save the nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean'd her breast against a thorn,
And there sung the dolefullest ditty
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry;
Tereu, tereu, by and by:
That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs so lively shown
Made me think upon mine own.
-Ah, thought I, thou mournst in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain:

Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee;

King Pandion, he is dead,

All thy friends are lapp'd in lead:
All thy fellow birds do sing
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor bird, like thee
None alive will pity me.

Richard Barnefield.

LOVE'S PERJURIES.

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LOVE'S PERJURIES.

ON a day, alack the day!
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air:

Through the velvet leaves the wind
All unseen 'gan passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,

Wish'd himself the heaven's breath.
Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alack, my hand is sworn

Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn:
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet;

Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.
Do not call it sin in me

That I am forsworn for thee:

Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiope were,
And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.

W. Shakespeare.