Renaissance critics have long been puzzled by the revisions Michael Drayton made over a twenty-five year period and through six editions of the sonnets which culminated in the 1619 Idea. In Sixtie Three Sonnets. In his persistence with the form, Drayton was mysteriously out of tune with his times.¹ No other sonneteer left such a record of rewriting through successive editions. There exists a clear body of evidence of how Drayton revised the sequence in at least four major stages. Although most critics agree generally on the poetic direction of the revisions toward metrical regularity and away from convoluted syntax and excessive Petrarchanism, there has been no consensus on Drayton's degree of success in producing a sonnet sequence with consistent thematic unity.

Rosemary Tuve was one of the first to show Drayton's painstaking craft at work. She argues that the poems retained from the 1594 First Edition were revised for metrical regularity, clarity, and decorum of metaphor, and that though many conceited poems from 1594 were thrown out and many ornamental ones retained, the kind of conceit Drayton used became subordinate to "poetic grace."² J. W. Lever, finds Drayton vulgar and bathetic but often capable of producing sonnets "combining ingenuity, colloquial vigor, and balanced expression."³

In a more scholarly analysis — as opposed to merely appreciative or detractory comments — Joseph Berthelot⁴, in somewhat unsystematic fashion, and William Schroeder⁵, in a more rigorous analysis, both approach the changes of prosody and rhetoric and ultimately substantiate Tuve's general arguments. Most critics find an increased dramatic immediacy and colloquialism but attribute it to different causes, most of which lie within the domain of rather vague historical speculation on the Shakespearian influence, the impact of Drayton's satirists, or the "metaphysical" fashion following John Donne. Incidentally, many positions are supported with the same general evidence, which includes phrases such as, "recondite and homely imagery," "informality," "colloquialism," "dramatic immediacy," and "deliberate roughness." For example, Louise H. Westling⁶ following the arguments set forth by Lever also finds the influence of Wyatt and Surrey.

Finally, in terms of Drayton's larger structural or thematic purpose, Kathleen Tillotson⁷ suggests that each edition presents new changes and grounds her arguments in historical scholarship for which the evidence is most firm on the 1599 revisions but increasingly vague for later revisions. Berthelot seems to belong in the school of critics desperately grasping to discover a unity and amplifies upon the problems of authorial intention by attempting to demonstrate Drayton's consistency in his "new tone of lighthearted inconsistency and independence."⁸ Walter R. Davis uncovers a structural principle in the persona of the libertine who writes a "comic sonnet-sequence, its subject the unsuccessful attempt to avoid conventionalty,"⁹ like Berthelot's, an argument which artfully tries to see consistency in inconsistency. The libertine pose, repeated throughout the sonnet sequence, distances the poet from his experiences and presents him as an artist searching out variety rather than expressive depth. Davis asserts that the libertine also eventually plays the fool — who it turns out is the true lover — pointing out the final couplets that appear to be clichés and hence provide a comic twist to the mask, which is, nevertheless, merely a shield for his true suffering. Westling differs from Davis only in her interpretation of libertinism: she reads Renaissance satire and skeptical philosophy in the pose and argues that it is abandoned at the end of the sonnet sequence, at which point Idea becomes "a record of serious devotion."¹⁰

A problem with any approach is that we may find the critic attempting to ferret out a unity which may or may not exist in the work itself, or which may exist in the critic's own imagination, in his or her historical age (as with any from Boileau's to Edmund Wilson's), or even more particularly, in a specific school of critical thought. The latter I take to be a peculiar difficulty as well as the complete artificiality of the numerological school of criticism. Alastair Fowler¹¹ hints that the numbering of Sonnet 63 was reckoned the "climacteric age" (7 × 9), but he falls far short of proving that the sequence follows in units of nines. Fowler attempts to ignore these difficulties by first claiming that the method is commonly applied only on the editio princeps and then performing his numerological calculations on the final sequence of 1619. Sonnet 63 entered the sonnet sequence in the 1599 edition, but as Sonnet 55. In subsequent editions of 1602, it moved to become Sonnet 61, in 1605, Sonnet 62, and only arrived at the position of Sonnet 63 in the final 1619 edition. Only Sonnets 9 and 18 carry out what appears to have been an abortive attempt to impose a numerological system of references. Sonnet 12 lists nine faculties of the Soul, and Sonnet 15 explicitly mentions the age fifteen as the bridal age. Beyond these somewhat obvious and calculated interpolations by Drayton, Fowler's argument fails because of the problems of the shuffling order of the poems and in the total number of poems contained in each successive edition (for example, the 1594 edition contained only 53 poems). Of course, the total number of sonnets in Idea is not 63 but 64 (or in 1594, 54) when one includes the introductory To the Reader of these Sonnets. Given the repetition of its themes in many other "literary critical" sonnets added in 1599, it is scarcely separable from the sonnet sequence as a whole. Even more to the point, To the Reader appeared as Sonnet 2 in all editions prior to 1619. Most damning of all, Sonnets 9 and 18 arrived at those positions belatedly in the 1605 edition (and not the editio princeps), and Sonnet 15 was not included at all until 1619. Sonnet 54 — which numerologically equals 9 × 6 — appears as Sonnet 1 in 1594 and is an obvious matching pair with Sonnet 3 (which appeared as 10 in 1594); their first and second lines unmistakably mark their echoing strains. It would be logical, then, to observe that Drayton had among his working conceits the idea of "celestial numbers," but that his attempts to impose any regularity on his attenuated materials failed to provide the elegant coherence, the perfect order of a closed system, that latter-day numerological critics may wish to superimpose.

Still, some larger structural patterns may be discerned without fear of obscuring the poems. Drayton, because he persisted in reordering, deleting, and interpolating at four different periods — represented in the editions of 1599, 1600-1602, 1605, and 1619 — was indeed concerned about getting the poems into some kind of progression. He seems to base his revisions within the fatally derivative and immature 1594 group, from which he saved only 20 of the original 53, on a broad structural principle of interlacement. In one reads roughly from the middle of the sequence toward its edges, a series of matched pairs emerge:

• Sonnets 32 and 53 both address the Ankor River, on the bank of which Idea lives.
• Sonnets 31 and 49 cavil at scoffers or critics who "keepe the packe-Horse Way" (31).
• Sonnet 16 alludes to the Phoenix, while Sonnet 56 mentions an Eaglet.
• Sonnets 36 and 48 both "conjure" Cupid.
• Sonnets 2 and 46 both reflect the theme of the murdered heart.

This two-part pattern should not be overstated. It is clear that the examples show an asymmetrical arrangement. Ideas, themes, and images bob and weave into the progression and reflect back and forth upon each other. They do so at odd and unexpected intervals, sometimes remote but at other times in close proximity. The pattern of interlace that was roughly established in the 1594 poems is reinforced in successive revisions and additions. As Drayton added to the overall number of sonnets and removed 33 of the 1594 poems, he incremented the system of echoed strains recurring at intervals within the sequence.

Other similar asymmetries emerge in patterns of three, usually in repeated motifs:

• The eternizing theme appears in Sonnets 6, 44, and 47 within varying moods. Sonnet 6, a 1619 addition is the most implicitly cynical. Drayton introduces the idea of immortalizing the lady only after first evoking "paltry, foolish, painted things," presumably as points of contrast. Sonnet 44 carries an ironic twist. The poet trumpets his own claim to immortality. The whole idea of "eternizing" employed by Spenser, Shakespeare, Daniel, and others, is highly interesting in itself, for the poet asserts that the lady will be immortalized by his poem — an extravagant claim that is found in demonstrably un-extravagant writers — yet he most assuredly argues also for his own immortality through his verse. Drayton brashly states in Sonnet 44, "My Name shall mount upon Eternitie," and in Sonnet 47, "I in the Circuit for the Lawrell strove." Indeed, time has borne him out, for today we remember the names of specific court ladies with difficulty, but the poets and their works have endured and continue to be studied as "literature."
• The conventional motif of the lover's madness works in three sonnets, dominating
  Sonnet 9:

              I am Lunaticke,
  And ever this in Mad-men you shall finde,
  What they last thought of, when the Braine grew sick,
  In most distraction they keepe that in Minde. (lines 5-8)

  Sonnet 41, "distracted in Loves Lunacie" (line 9) explicitly.
  Sonnet 22, "To Folly," which describes an asylum-like place where "Fooles" and "Ideots" range among "Children."

The idea of the poet-lover as fool, which may differ only by a slight degree from the lover as madman, also turns up in Sonnet 59, line 4, "Faire words make Fooles."

Further repetitions of motif are expressed in multiple sonnets and recur at unpredictable intervals in the sequence:

• Love is personified in several places but most evocatively in Sonnet 7 as a drunkard who "play's a swagg'ring Ruffins part" (line 10) and eventually kills the lover's "Heart" (line 12).
• Love also appears in Sonnet 22, in which he is a "Baby" who "playes with Gawdes and Toyes" (line 5).
• Love is personified in Sonnet 23 as a beggar who takes unscrupulous advantage of his charitable host and then sets his house, "my Heart" (line 11), on fire.
• Love is personified in Sonnet 59 as a traveling companion with whom the speaker ripostes in proverbs.
• Love is last personified in Sonnet 61, in which he is an old man on his deathbed, attended by other personifications, Passion, Faith, and Innocence.

The addresses to Love — as Cupid — in Sonnets 36 and 48 work as raillery in different voices. In Sonnet 36, Drayton heaps mythological invocations and pleadings which culminate in the threat, "make her love, or CUPID be thou damn'd" (line 14). In Sonnet 48, the poet-lover not only addresses Cupid but curses him, "CUPID, I hate thee, which I'de have thee know" (line 1). He then tells Cupid to "Practise thy Quiver, and turne Crow-keeper" (line 8) and to "Goe hyre thy selfe some bungling Harpers Boy" (line 10). Despite the conventionality of most all these motifs, none of the poems appeared in the original 1594 Ideas Mirrour:

• Sonnets 7 and 23 enter first in 1599.
• Sonnets 22 and 59 appear first in 1600.
• Most intriguingly, Sonnets 36, 48, and 61 all appear in the last stage of revision, the final 1619 edition.

Clearly Drayton intended to keep, and even intensify, the thread of personifications winding through the sequence. He worked and reworked patterns of conventional motifs accordingly. Most odd of the issue is Sonnet 61, in which the personifications of "Passion," "Faith," and "Innocence" return in conjunction with the hitherto unflatteringly rendered "Love." Since most of the other 1619 additions are likewise cynical in tone, this hopeful note is either an aberration or Drayton's attempt to resolve his theme through dramatic development, from the "Baby" motif of Sonnet 22 to the "deathbed" of Sonnet 61.

Specific instances of other strands of the interlaced structure can be cited, but often they can be worked out in almost random caprice. Most, lacking any particular logic for their numerical position in the sequence, turn nevertheless on conventional ideas:

• The lover's woe in Sonnets 3, 26, and 54.
• The lover in torment, in Sonnets 14 and 40.
• The lover betrayed or cheated in Sonnets 3, 10, 29, and 52.
• The beloved (Idea) is called "An evill spirit" and, paradoxically, an "Angell Devill" in Sonnet 20, and is likened to a variety of demon, a subterrane, who hoards treasures underground, in Sonnet 59.
• The lover becomes angry or scornful toward the beloved in Sonnets 8, 15, and 52.
• The personified "Reason" is frequently evoked and supports the lover's plaints against "Folkes" who term his "Prayses folly" (Sonnet 28); but Reason conflicts with Love in Sonnet 38, creating within the poet-lover a "writer's block" while the two personifications debate which of them should take precedence over the other.
• Mythological characters appear scattered throughout the sequence as dramatis personae or as metaphor-allusions that enhance or embellish the poet-lover's mental picture of his journey through hell, Elizium (Sonnet 39), and Heaven (Sonnet 60):
  • Prometheus in Sonnet 14 (an addition from 1602, where it appeared as Sonnet 17, then moved to 14 where it remained in 1605).
  • Styx, Hecat, Proserpine, and Psyche in 36 (added in 1619).
  • Again Stix or Phlegeton, Erinnis, Hecat, Apollo, Minerva, and Astrea in 39 (from the 1594 original sequence, where it appeared as 18, got moved to 38 in 1599, moved again to 43 in 1602, and met its final resting place as 39 in 1605).
  • Sisiphus and Ixion appear in 40 (also from 1594 as 44, moved to 39 in 1599, back to 44 in 1602, and ending as 40 in 1605).
  • Orpheus, along with the Muses, appears in 45 (which entered the sequence in 1599 as 44, moved to 49 in 1602 and back to 45 in 1605).
  • Apollo is alluded to in 21, which first appeared in 1619.

Other interlacements work subtly by reinforcing a previously expressed idea within a dramatic compression. For instance, the idea in the final couplet of To the Reader, a 1599 addition:

My Muse is rightly of the English straine,
That cannot long one Fashion intertaine (lines 13-14)

is startlingly resounded in line 4 of Sonnet 27, added in 1619, but in a totally different context:

Is not Love here, as 'tis in other Clymes,
And diff'reth it, as doe the sev'rall Nations?
Or hath it lost the Vertue, with the Times,
Or in this Iland alt'reth with the Fashions? (lines 1-4)

Although the opening announcement of the libertine poet of To the Reader, perhaps the most brazen statement of his chosen mode, is returned to repeatedly in the "literary critical" sonnets (9, 24, 28, 35, 42, but also 31 and by analogy 49), Sonnet 27 softly undercuts the whole pretense. His earlier defiance is caught in the consciously muted allusion, and the real point becomes the reaffirmation of his devotion to his beloved.

Less effectively, the extreme verbal awkwardness and wordplay of Sonnet 5 (which plays on the words "Not" and "I," i.e., "Aye") are followed ploddingly in Sonnets 11 (playing on "You/Self/I") and 19 ("You/Me," and "Hate/Love"). The mode becomes almost solipsistic, as it is increasingly apparent that the lover is flagellating words in his own isolated "Leaden Braine" (Sonnet 49). At any rate, the lover's repetitive mill grinds on through Sonnet 26 ("Hope/Despair") and finally Sonnet 33 ("Eyes/Heart"). At this point the repetiton of words in "witty wordplay" is abandoned, thankfully, for the less forced, or perhaps, more mature voice that dominates the second half of Idea. On another structural note, the refrain structure of Sonnet 34, in which line 1 is repeated in lines 5 and 9, and line 4 repeated in line 8 and with a slight variation in line 12, is itself a compression of form, somewhat like a villanelle or roundelay. It becomes a repetitive model for the principle of interlacement and a fascinating paradigm of how Drayton might have unfolded a structured pattern of interlacement. Crucially, Sonnet 34 is also the only poem following the refrain structure, and it appears very close to the center of the whole sonnet sequence.

However, the purpose so far has been to demonstrate only that Drayton consciously ordered the sonnet sequence according to a loosely interlaced pattern, one that at best can be described as asymmetrical, at worst shown to be hit-and-miss inserting. At this point it is useful to examine briefly the distribution of the various stages of revision. After the critical lambasting of Ideas Mirrour (1594) at the hands of satirists like Marston, Davies, and Guilpin, Drayton thoroughly refurbished the whole sequence from beginning to end:

• The 1599 edition's new poems (following the 1619 numbering): Sonnets 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 19, 20, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 34, 44, 45, 49, and 53.
• The 1600 edition's new poems: Sonnets 4, 9, 14, 22, 25, 28, and 59.
• 1602's edition added only one new poem, Sonnet 37.
• The 1605 edition's new poems: Sonnets 43, 46, 47, 50, 51, 57, and 58.
• The 1619 edition's new poems: Sonnets 1, 6, 8, 15, 21, 27, 36, 48, 52, and 61.

Only one year after the first round of revisions, in 1600, Drayton inserted nearly all the new poems in the first half of the sequence. In 1605, all the major changes occurred toward the end. Then the 1619 additions appear somewhat evenly distributed throughout the whole. Obviously, in the first revisions Drayton perceived what amounted to a defective totality and rewrote a new sequence, combining among other things the libertine pose and a self-mockery that, in effect, also mocked his own naive poetical mode in 1594. Of sheer necessity, perhaps, he salvaged what he could of the least bathetic sonnets and least flagrantly conventionalized in their imitation of the Petrarchan mode.

It is also apparent that the 1600 and 1605 stages of revision represent Drayton's desire to "clean up" localized problems within the sequence, initially found to exist in the first half of Idea and corrected with the insertion of poems even more cynical in tone and which emphasize the madness and folly of love.¹² In the 1605 revisions, fixing problems that Drayton perceived in the latter half of the sequence, the insertions are characterized by even greater extremity of imagery and attitude. Sonnets 47-54 are commented upon below. It is enough to say here that there is an increasing pitch of morbidity in many of the 1605 additions.

Finally, the 1619 interpolations provide the most tantalizing set of information, for the poems new in the final edition were sprinkled throughout the sequence once again, and at more-or-less evenly spaced intervals. However, one large hiatus remains in this analysis. The longest block of poems retained or only slightly revised from Ideas Mirrour occurs between Sonnets 32 and 42 and is virtually untouched (only Sonnets 36 and 37 are new).

Such a structural analysis would point to the argument that the middle Sonnets 32-42 form the emotional "center," indeed the very "heart" of the sonnet sequence. These poems are also the most Petrarchan in manner, the sweetest toward the lady, as well as the most self-pitying by the poet-lover. These poems are also arguably the core of the "sonnet" forms that remained from Drayton's original plan. Note carefully, however, that when one examines the poems that expand outward from this "center," one finds increasingly epigrammatic poems, poems whose mode is not exclusively that of mel (sweetness), the "sugar" traditional to the sonnet form. These added poems increasingly make use of sal (saltiness), fel (bitterness, gall), and occasionally acetum (sourness, vinegar). All three of these modes are common in satire and epigram, but not so commonly found in the Renaissance sonnet. If Idea is to be made sense of as a lyric sequence, the discrepancies of tone, attitude, and subject matter must be brought within a coherent scope, and the distinctions of genre must certainly form the fulcrum of the argument.

A digression at this point may serve to illuminate the problem. Sonnets 47-54 present amazing disturbances of thematic continuity, which one merely tries to rationalize away with the common appeal to "variety."

• Sonnet 47 (a 1605 insertion) echoes the eternizing theme in a conventionally Petrarchan fashion, having the poet — speaking retrospectively, already in the past tense, of his passion's first inception — reflect on his progress toward literary fame. Nonetheless, he cannot appreciate the "Showts and Claps" (line 9) he receives because his real purpose has been only "to eternize you" — i.e., Idea (line 14). Thus all accolades ring hollow.
• Sonnet 48 (inserted in 1619 and echoing Sonnet 36) opens with the strong, "CUPID, I hate thee..." and goes on to castigate the God of Love for botching the poet-lover's suit to his mistress. Here the imagery recalls not only the previous Cupid invocation, but also the comparison in Sonnet 23 of Love to a wandering beggar, returning in 48 as a "naked Starvling" (line 2).
• When we turn to Sonnet 49, we find what appears to be a mirror of the earlier literary critical Sonnet 31, but here the poet's main target is any other "Leaden Braines" who know not Love. Deriving from yet another Petrarchan motif, the point of Sonnet 49 becomes simply that only true lovers can understand true poetry.
• Sonnet 50, added in 1605, turns on the conventional idea of the lover's torment at the hands of the lady, but Drayton employs a devastatingly morbid topical allusion. In his suffering, the poet-lover is compared to a prisoner in some foreign country, where he finds himself the victim of sadistic medical experiments, namely, the practicing of the new methods of surgery by physicians, who first open and then "stanch" his wounds, then test out new poisons on him, and finally restore him to health only for the purpose of repeating the cycle of tortures later.
• Turning to Sonnet 51, the reader finds a totally opposite mood. In this poem, also added in 1605, the tone is reflective (as in Sonnet 47). The tense once again indicates past events — far removed from the throes of love's agony — and the subject becomes the historical trends in the years "since first my love began" (line 1). The poem's resolution is a quiet reaffirmation of the lover's steadfast devotion to the lady. In the meantime, however, at least six years of history have passed the lover by, from "Essex great fall" (line 6) through the death of Elizabeth and the ascension of James (lines 7-8), to the treaty with Spain (line 8). As with many of the other statements of devotion, the reflective mood carries a cutting edge that reminds us of the poet's loss of his love.
• Sonnet 52 another 1619 addition, clearly brings forward the interlace pattern in its connection with the recurring motif of the stolen or murdered heart. But here, the tone is manifestly bitter and accusatory. The poet-lover, in a rapid-fire series of angry questions, all but tells the lady that she has no heart herself, "Or if thou hast, it is a flinty one" (line 14).
• Sonnet 53 a remainder from the 1594 group, is an idealized evocation of the Ankor River as the Helicon of the poet's life. It is filled with "Dew" and "Nectar" and a "Shepheard" and a "Nymph" in the most conventionalized of Petrarchan pastoralism.
• Finally, Sonnet 54, still another holdover from 1594, runs through the roster of Petrarchan characterizations of the lover's woe, then circles back in the final lines to the eternizing theme and reasserts the poet's steadfastness and virtuous love:

  Which Name my Muse to highest Heav'ns shall raise,
  By chaste Desire, true Love, and vertuous Prayse (lines 13-14)

  To recapitulate briefly, the problem of continuity of poetic purpose should be obvious from scrutinizing this block of eight poems. One cannot seriously appeal to a general, catch-all notion of "variety" as the unifying element. This disorganized mass of different literary artifacts cannot be subsumed by appeal to "universal expressions of the human condition." A better explanation surely would lie with the poet's striving to maintain the theme of the poet-lover's madness, by stressing the sturm and drang that characterizes his mind from one moment to the next. But even this idea seems to strain a bit.

  The textual-historical record of Drayton's twenty-five years of drastic alterations to the sonnet sequence cries out loudly for some explanation. It is clear that for whatever reasons, biographically, literary related, or psychologically motivated, Drayton labored — long past the decade when sonnet sequences were in vogue — to "get it right." But it is equally clear that as he made successive changes, his poetical purposes shifted greatly. Much comment has already seen print about the 1599 additions and their relation to the critical attacks made on Ideas Mirrour after 1594. Some of the best and most frequently anthologized sonnets (especially To the Reader) date from this stage of revision, in which Drayton's posturing takes a sharp focus that allures us with its combination of roguishness, off-handedness, or modernity. Nevertheless, the libertine persona does not work consistently in other poems of the sequence, though it certainly applies to the group of sonnets that Drayton added in 1599. Thus, the problem with the critics, who already over-fond of synthetic constructs, load their terms in facile deference to a presumed, or pre-assumed, unity.¹³

  What the block of sonnets described above (Sonnets 47-54) illustrates, poetical purposes aside, is a shifting drama of poetical mode and genre. Rosalie Colie has touched on the epigrammatic quality of some of Drayton's couplets¹⁴ and has ingeniously connected the sonnet tradition, with its emphasis on mel, with that of the epigram — which encompasses mel, sal, fel, and acetum. This epigrammatic vehicle emerges via the quatorzain and other lyric forms termed "sonnets" in the Renaissance, when that form was somewhat less rigidly defined than it is in today's literature textbooks (i.e., as a 14-line poem having a rhyme scheme of "a-b-b-a" or "a-b-a-b" and which may be divided into the "Petrarchan" type and the "English" type). Extrapolating from Colie's observations, which need not be summarized here, one may recognize the value of applying these distinctions of genre to the final version of Idea. Not only is it generally true that many of Drayton's final couplets carry a kind of epigrammatic "point," but a number of the individual poems can stand as free-standing epigrams themselves.

  The literary critical sonnet, typified by Sonnet 31 "Methinkes I see some crooked Mimicke jeere," assumes the generic position of epigram rather than sonnet. Compare this poem with Jonson's Epigram XVII, "To the Learnèd Critic" — which maintains a degree of unslanderous decorum by comparison with Drayton — and the mere fact that Drayton's poem contains fourteen lines becomes somewhat irrelevant. The defiant, sarcastic tone culminates in the definitely sour note of the final line, "I scorne all Earthly Dung-bred Scarabies." The poet compares his "Critics" to dung beetles, feeding off the excrement of the poet! If this is love poetry, it is of a different order than the sugared mellifluence we find, for example, in Sonnet 4, "Bright star of beauty."

  Among the most interesting of the added poems are those that stand alone, having no clear earlier or later interlaced counterparts. One sonnet that has no obvious parallel within Idea is Sonnet 21, added in 1619, "A Witlesse Gallant," which cuts the figure of a courtly buffoon who has the Idea poet-lover write him a love sonnet for his lady. Surely this figure is not unlike the poet in Jonson's Epigram CXII, "To a Weak Gamester in Poetry" or Epigram LVI, "On Poet Ape" — which itself is, incidentally, in the form of the English sonnet. Still, Jonson's spills vitriol much more effusively on this topic than Drayton cares to. Drayton's failed poet-gallant merely presents another's poems to his mistress as if he himself had written them. Jonson's Poet-Ape steals others' wit rampantly. Jonson's introductory Epigrams (I, To the Reader, and 11, To My Book), though differing in substance, tone, and function, remind us of Drayton's To the Reader of These Sonnets. These examples do not argue so much for influence but merely demonstrate, by comparison, the epigrammatic genre surfacing in Drayton's successive revisions of Idea.

  The poems that finally appeared in the 1619 edition of Idea. In Sixtie Three Sonnets demonstrate a loose structural unity, which can be broadly termed a principle of interlacement. However, this derivational element seems to have been one that occurred almost as an afterthought, and moreover one that Drayton applied somewhat inconsistently. As I have argued here, what originally was intended as a sonnet sequence, functioning wholly within a tradition of similar sonnet sequences, emerges, as a consequence of Drayton's tamperings, as an admixture of genres. Little account may ever be taken of the flux, or perhaps confusion, that exists in all literary artifacts. Drayton's case is illuminating because we do have an outstanding body of evidence for a persistent drive to rework what one would think should have been, in each of five different editions, a finished opus.

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  Annotatia

  ¹ Kathleet Tillotson, "Introduction" to Idea in J. William Hebel, Ed., The Works of Michael Drayton, Vol. 5 (Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1961), p. 137.

  ² Rosemary Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947), pp. 69-76.

  ³ J. W. Lever, The Elizabethan Love Sonnet (London: Methuen, 1956), pp. 154-160.

  ⁴ Joseph Berthelot, Michael Drayton (New York: Twayne, 1967).

  ⁵ William Schroeder, "Michael Drayton: A Study of the Idea Sonnet Revisions," Unpublished dissertation, Northwestern University (Dissertation Abstracts 1959, 2277-2278).

  ⁶ Louise H. Westling, The Evolution of Michael Drayton's Idea (Salzburg Studies in English Literature, 1974) p. 7.

  ⁷ Tillotson, pp. 137-139.

  ⁸ Berthelot, ibid..

  ⁹ Walter R. Davis, "'Fantastickly I Sing': Drayton's Idea of 1619," Studies in Philology, 66 (1969), pp. 204-216.

  ¹⁰ Westling, p. 10 and pp. 126-166.

  ¹¹ Alastair Fowler, Triumphal Forms (Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 3, 176.

  ¹² Tillotson, p. 139, remarks on this. Her comments on the 1605 changes are less insightful.

  ¹³ For example, Davis, Berthelot, and Westling.

  ¹⁴ Rosalie Colie, Shakespeare's Living Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), Chapter 2 and passim.

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  Bibliographia

  Edition:
  
  Hebel, J. William, Editor. The Works of Michael Drayton. 5 Volumes. Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1931-1941. Corrected and reprinted, 1961.

  Secondary:
  
  Benson, Donald R. "Idea and the Problem of Knowledge in Seventeenth Century Aesthetics." English Miscellany, 19 (1968), pp. 83-104.

  Berthelot, Joseph A. Michael Drayton. New York: Twayne, 1967.

  Buxton, John. A Tradition of Poetry. London: Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967.

  Colie, Rosemary. Shakespeare's Living Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.

  Davis, Walter R. "'Fantastickly I Sing:' Drayton's Idea of 1619." Studies in Philology, 66 (1969), pp. 204-216.

  Elton, Oliver, An Introduction to Michael Drayton. New York: B. Franklin, 1970 (reprint of Spenser Society, n.s., No. 6a, 1895).

  Elton, Oliver, Michael Drayton: A Critical Study. New York: Russell and Russell, 1966 (reprint of 1905).

  Fowler, Alastair. Triumphal Forms. Cambridge University Press, 1970.

  Hardin, Richard F. Michael Drayton and the Passing of Elizabethan England. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1973.

  Lever, J. W. The Elizabethan Love Sonnet. London: Methuen, 1956.

  Newdigate, Bernard H. Michael Drayton and his Circle. Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1941.

  Noyes, Russell. Drayton's Literary Vogue Since 1631. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Studies, 22, No. 107, 1936.

  Praz, Mario. "Michael Drayton." English Studies, 28 (1947), pp. 97-107.

  Schönert, Jörg. "Draytons Sonett-Revisionen: Zum Problem des Ubergangsdichters." Anglia, 85 (1967), pp. 161-183.

  Schroder, William Thomas. "Michael Drayton: A Study of the Idea Sonnet Revisions." Unpublished Dissertation. Northwestern, 1959 (DA, xx, pp. 2277-2278).

  St. Clair, F. Y. "Drayton's First Revision of His Sonnets." Studies in Philology, 36 (1939), pp. 40-59.

  Tillotson, Kathleen and Newdigate, Bernard H., Editors. "Introduction, Notes, Variant Readings," in J. William Hebel, Ed., The Works of Michael Drayton, Vol. 5. Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press, 1961.

  Tuve, Rosemond. Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947, 1963.

  Westling, Louise H. The Evolution of Michael Drayton's Idea. Salzburg, Austria: Salzburg Studies in English Literature, 1974.

  Many dissertations have been written on Drayton's sonnets, most, if not all, in American universities. Since I have no means of evaluating the critical significance of all of these, I demur at listing them here. They my be found in the MLA Annual Bibliography and in the Dissertation Abstracts Index.

  ---

  I      D      E      A.

  
  
  

  I N
  
  S I X T I E      T H R E E
  
  S O N N E T S.

  B Y
  
  M I C H A E L      D R A Y T O N,
  
  E S Q U I R E.

  ---

  ---

  L O N D O N,
  
  Printed for      I O H N      S M E T H VV I C K E.
  
  1 6 1 9.

  ---

  TO THE READER OF THESE SONNETS.

  INTO these Loves, who but for Passion lookes,
  At this first sight, here let him lay them by,
  And seeke else-where, in turning other Bookes,
  Which better may his labour satisfie.
  No farre-fetch'd Sigh shall ever wound my Brest,
  Love from mine Eye a Teare shall never wring,
  Nor in Ah-mees my whyning Sonnets drest,
  (A Libertine) fantastickly I sing:
  My Verse is the true image of my Mind,
  Ever in motion, still desiring change;
  And as thus to Varietie inclin'd,
  So in all Humors sportively I range:
       My Muse is rightly of the English straine,
       That cannot long on Fashion intertaine.
  

  In 1594 through 1602 Editions, No. 2
  In 1605-1619, Introductory Sonnet

  IDEA

  1

  LIKE an adventurous Sea-farer am I,
  Who hath some long and dang'rous Voyage beene,
  And call'd to tell of his Discoverie,
  How farre he sayl'd, what Countries he had seene,
  Proceeding from the Port whence he put forth,
  Shews by his Compasse, how his Course he steer'd,
  When East, when West, when South, and when by North,
  As how the Pole to ev'ry place was rear'd,
  What Capes he doubled, of what Continent,
  The Gulphes and Straits, that strangely he had past,
  Where most becalm'd, where with foule Weather spent,
  And on what Rocks in perill to be cast?
       Thus in my Love, Time calls me to relate
       My tedious Travels, and oft-varying Fate.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  2

  MY HEART was slaine, and none but you and I:
  Who should I thinke the Murther should commit?
  Since, but your selfe, there was no Creature by,
  But onely I, guiltlesse of murth'ring it.
  It slew it selfe; the Verdict on the view
  Doe quit the dead, and me not accessaire:
  Well, well, I feare it will be prov'd by you,
  Th'evidence so great a proofe doth carrie.
  But O, see, see, we need inquire no further,
  Upon your Lips the scarlet drops are found,
  And in your Eye, the Boy that did the Murther,
  Your Cheekes yet pale, since first he gave the Wound.
       By this I see, how-ever things be past,
       Yet Heav'n will still have Murther out at last.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition, also 1602, as No. 5
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 2

  3

  TAKING my Penne, with Words to cast my Woe,
  Duely to count the summe of all my cares,
  I finde, my Griefes innumerable growe,
  The reck'nings rise to millions of Despaires,
  And thus dividing of my fatall Houres,
  The paiments of my Love, I read, and crosse,
  Subtracting, set my Sweets unto my Sowres,
  My Joyes arreage leades me to my losse;
  And thus mine Eise a debtor to thine Eye,
  Which by Extortion gaineth all their lookes,
  My heart hath paid such grievous Usurie,
  That all their Wealth lies in thy beauties Bookes,
       And all is Thine which hath been due to Me,
       And I a Bankrupt, quite undone by Thee.
  

  First appeared in 1594 Edition as No. 16
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 6
  In 1602-1619 Editions, moved to No. 3

  4

  BRIGHT starre of Beauty, on whose eye-lids sit
  A thousand Nimph-like and inamor'd Graces,
  The Goddesses of Memory and Wit,
  Which there in order take their severall places,
  In whose deare Bosome, sweet delicious Love
  Layes downe his Quiver, which he once did beare:
  Since he that blessed Paradise did prove,
  And leaves his Mothers lap to sport him there,
  Let others strive to entertaine with Words,
  My Soule is of a braver Mettle made,
  I hold that vile, which Vulgar wit affords;
  In Me's that Faith which Time cannot invade.
       Let what I praise, be still made good by you:
       Be you most worthy, whilst I am most true.
  

  First appeared in 1602 Edition as No. 66
  In 1605 Edition, moved to No. 63
  In 1619 Edition, moved to No. 4

  5

  NOTHING but No and I, and I and No,
  How fals it out so strangely you reply?
  I tell you (Faire) ile not be answered so,
  With this affirming No, denying I.
  I say, I Love, you sleightly answer I:
  I say, You Love, you peule me out a No:
  I say, I Die, you Eccho me with I:
  Save mee I Crie, you sigh me out a No;
  Must Woe and I, have naught but No and I?
  No I, am I, if I no more can have;
  Answere no more, with Silence make reply,
  And let me take my selfe what I doe crave,
       Let No and I, with I and you be so:
       Then answere No and I, and I and No.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition, also 1602, as No. 8
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 5

  6

  HOW many paltry, foolish, painted things,
  That now in Coaches trouble ev'ry Street,
  Shall be forgotten, whom no Poet sings,
  Ere they be well wrap'd in their winding Sheet?
  Where I to thee Eternitie shall give,
  When nothing else remayneth of these dayes,
  And Queenes hereafter shall be glad to live
  Upon the Almes of thy superfluous prayse;
  Virgins and Matrons reading these my Rimes,
  Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
  That they shall grieve, they liv'd not in these Times,
  To have seene thee, their Sexes onely glory:
       So shalt thou flye above the vulgar Throng,
       Still to survive in my immortall Song.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  7

  LOVE, in a Humor, play'd the Prodigall,
  And had my Senses to a solemne Feast;
  Yet more to grace the Company withall,
  Invites my Heart to be the chiefest Ghest:
  No other Drinke would serve this Gluttons turne,
  But precious Teares distilling from mine Eyne,
  Which with my Sighes this Epicure doth burne,
  Quaffing Carowses in this costly Wine;
  Where, in his Cups o'recome with fonde Excesse,
  Straightwayes he plays a swagg'ring Ruffins part,
  And at the Banquet, in his Drunkennesse,
  Slew his deare Friend, my kind and truest Heart:
       A gentle warning (Friends) thus may you see,
       What 'tis to keepe a Drunkard companie.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition, also 1602, as No. 10
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 7

  8

  THERE'S nothing grieves me, but that Age should haste,
  That in my dayes I may not see thee old,
  That where those two cleare sparkling Eyes are plac'd,
  Onely two Loope-holes, then I might behold.
  That lovely, arched, yvorie, pollish'd Brow,
  Defac'd with Wrinkles, that I might but see;
  Thy daintie Hayre, so curl'd, and crisped now,
  Like grizzled Mosse upon some aged Tree;
  Thy Cheeke, now flush with Roses, sunke, and leane,
  Thy Lips, with age, as any Wafer thinne,
  Thy Pearly Teeth out of thy Head so cleane,
  That when thou feel'st, thy Nose shall touch thy Chinne:
       These Lines that now thou scorn'st, which should delight thee,
       Then would I make thee read, but to despight thee.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  9

  AS OTHER Men, so I my selfe doe Muse,
  Why in this sort I wrest Invention so,
  And why these giddy Metaphors I use,
  Leaving the Path the greater part doe goe;
  I will resolve you; I am Lunaticke,
  And ever this in Mad-men you shall finde,
  What they last thought of, when the Braine grew sicke,
  In most distraction they keepe that in Minde.
  Thus talking idly in this Bedlam fit,
  Reason and I (you must conceive) are twaine,
  Tis nine yeares now since first I lost my Wit,
  Beare with Me then, though troubled be my Braine;
       With Diet and Correction, Men distraught,
       (Not too farre past) may to their Wits be brought.
  

  First appeared in 1602 Edition as No. 12
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 9

  10

  TO NOTHING fitter can I Thee compare,
  Then to the Sonne of some rich Penny-father,
  Who having now brought on his end with Care,
  Leaves to his Sonne all he had heap'd together;
  This new rich Novice, lavish of his chest,
  To one Man gives, doth on another spend,
  Then heere he riots, yet amongst the rest,
  Haps to lend some to one true honest Friend.
  Thy Gifts thou in Obscuritie doest waste,
  False Friends thy kindnesse, borne but to deceive Thee;
  Thy Love, that is on the unworthy plac'd,
  Time hath thy Beautie, which with Age will leave thee;
       Onely that little which to Me was lent,
       I give Thee back, when all the rest is spent.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 12
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 13
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 10

  11

  YOU not alone, when You are still alone,
  O God from You, that I could private be,
  Since You one were, I never since was one,
  Since You in Me, my selfe since out of Me,
  Transported from my Selfe, into Your being,
  Though either distant, present yet to either,
  Senselesse with too much Joy, each other seeing,
  And onely absent, when Wee are together.
  Give Me my Selfe, and take your Selfe againe,
  Devise some meanes, but how I may forsake You,
  So much is Mine, that doth with You remaine,
  That taking what is Mine, with Me I take You;
       You doe bewitch Me,O that I could flie,
       From my Selfe You, or from your own Selfe I.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 13
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 14
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 11

  12

  To the Soule.	THAT learned Father, which so firmely proves
  	The Soule of Man immortall and divine,
  	And doth the sev'rall Offices define:
  Anima	Gives her that Name, as she the Body moves,
  Amor	Then is she Love, imbracing Charitie,
  Animus	Moving a Will in us, it is the Mind,
  Mens	Retayning Knowledge, still the same to kind;
  Memoria	As intellectuall, it is Memorie,
  Ratio	In judging, Reason onely is her Name,
  Sensus	In speedie apprehension, it is Sense,
  Conscientia	In Right or Wrong, they call her Conscience,
  Spiritus	The Spirit, when it to God-ward doth inflame:
  	These of the Souls the sev'rall Functions bee,
  	Which my Heart, lightned by thy Love, doth see.

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 14
  In 1602 Edition moved to No. 15
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 12

  13

  LETTERS and Lines we see are soone defaced,     To the shadow.
  Metals doe waste, and fret with Cankers Rust,
  The Diamond shall once consume to Dust,
  And freshest Colours with fonde staynes disgraced
  Paper and Inke can paint but naked Words,
  To write with Blood, of force offends the Sight;
  And if with Teares I find them all too light,
  And Sighes and Signes a silly Hope affords,
  O sweetest Shadow, how thou serv'st my turne!
  Which still shalt be, as long as there is Sunne;
  Nor whilst the World is, never shall be done,
  Whilst Moone shall shine, or any Fire shall burne:
       That ev'ry thing whence Shadow doth proceed,
       May in his Shadow my Loves storie read.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 21
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 15
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 16
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 13

  14

  IF HE, from Heav'n that filch'd that living Fire,
  Condemn'd by J O V E to endlesse Torment bee,
  I greatly marvell, how you still goe free,
  That farre beyond P R O M E T H E U S did aspire:
  The Fire he stole, although of Heav'nly kind,
  Which from above he craftily did take,
  Of livelesse Clods, us living Men to make,
  He did bestowe in temper of the Mind.
  But you broke into Heav'ns immortall store,
  Where Vertue, Humour, Wit, and Beautie lay;
  Which taking thence, you have escap'd away,
  Yet stand as free as ere you did before:
       Yet old P R O M E T H E U S punish'd for his Rape.
       Thus poore Theeves suffer, when the greater scape.
  

  First appeared in 1602 Edition as No. 17
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 14

  15

  His Remedie for Love
  SINCE to obtaine thee, nothing me will sted,
  I have a Med'cine that shall cure my Love,
  The powder of her Heart dry'd, shen she is dead,
  That Gold nor Honour ne'r had pow'r to move;
  Mix'd with her Teares, that ne'r her true-Love crost,
  Nor at Fifteene ne'r long'd to be a Bride,
  Boyl'd with her Sighes, in giving up the Ghost,
  That for her late deceased Husband dy'd;
  Into the same then let a Woman breathe,
  That being chid, did never word replie,
  With one thrice-marry'd's Pray'rs, that did bequeath
  A Legacie to stale Virginitie.
       If this Receit have not the pow'r to winne me,
       Little Ile say, but thinke the Devil's in me.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  16

  An Allusion to the Phœnix
  'MONGST all the Creatures in this spacious Round,
  Of the Birds kind, the Phœnix is alone,
  Which best by you, of living Things, is knowne;
  None like to that, none like to you is found:
  Your Beautie is the hot and splend'rous Sunne,
  The precious Spices be your chaste Desire,
  Which being kindled by that heav'nly fire,
  Your Life so like the Phœnix begun;
  Your selfe thus burned in that sacred flame,
  With so rare sweetnesse all the Heav'ns perfuming,
  Againe increasing, as you are consuming,
  Onely by dying, borne the very same:
       And wing'd by Fame, you to the Starres ascend,
       So you of Time shall live beyond the End.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 6 with a different first line
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 18
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 19
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 16

  17

  STAY, speedy Time, behold, before thou passe,     To Time.
  From Age to Age, what thou has sought to see,
  One, in whom all the Excellencies be,
  In whom, Heav'n lookes it selfe as in a Glasse:
  Time, looke thou too, in this pure Mirrour see,
  As the World's Beautie in his Infancie,
  What it was then, and thou before it was;
  Passe on, and to Posteritie tell this,
  Yet see thou tell, but truly, what hath beene:
  Say to our Nephewes, that thou once hast seene,
  In perfect humane shape, all heav'nly Blisse;
       And bid them mourne, nay more, despaire with thee,
       That she is gone, her like againe to see.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 7
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 19
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 20
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 17

  18

  TO THIS our World, to Learning, and to Heaven,     To the Celestial
  Three Nines there are, to every one a Nine,               Numbers.
  One number of the Earth, the other both Divine,
  One Woman now, makes three odde Numbers even;
  Nine orders first of Angels be in Heaven,
  Nine Muses doe with Learning still frequent,
  These with the Gods are ever resident;
  Nine worthie Women to the World were given;
  My worthy, One to these Nine Worthies addeth,
  And my faire Muse, one Muse unto the Nine,
  And my good Angell (in my Soule divine)
  With one more Order, these nine Orders gladdeth:
       My Muse, My Worthy, and my Angel then,
       Makes every One of these three Nines a Ten.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 8 with a different first line
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 20
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 21
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 18

  19

  To Humour.
  YOU cannot love, my prettie Heart, and why?
  There was a time, You told Me that you would,
  But now againe You will the same denie,
  If it might please You, would to God You could,
  What, will You hate? nay that You will not neither,
  Nor Love, nor Hate, how then? what will you doe?
  What will You keepe a meane then betwixt either?
  Or will You love Me, and yet hate Me too?
  Yet serves not This: what next, what other Shift?
  You Will, and Will not, what a coyle is here?
  I am Your craft, now I perceive Your drift,
  And all this while, I was mistaken there:
       Your Love and Hate is this, I now doe prove You,
       You love in Hate, by Hate to make Me love You.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 21
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 22
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 19

  20

  AN EVILL spirit your beautie haunts Me still,
  Where with (alas) I have beene long possest,
  Which ceaseth not to tempt Me to each Ill,
  Nor gives Me once, but one poore minutes rest:
  In Me it speakes, whether I Sleepe or Wake,
  And when by Meanes, to drive it out I try,
  With greater Torments, then it Me doth take,
  And tortures Me in most extremity;
  Before my Face, it layes downe my Despaires,
  And hastes Me on unto a sudden Death;
  Now tempting Me, to drowne my Selfe in teares,
  And then in sighing, to give up my breath;
       Thus am I still provok'd, to every Evill,
       By this good wicked Spirit, sweet Angell Devill.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 22
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 23
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 20

  21

  A WITLESSE Gallant, a young Wench that woo'd,
  (Yet his dull Spirit her not one jot could move)
  Intreated me, as e'r I wish'd his good,
  To write him but one Sonnet to his Love:
  When I, as fast as e'r my Penne could trot,
  Powr'd out what first from quicke Invention came;
  Nor never stood one word thereof to blot,
  Much like his Wit, that was to use the same:
  But with my Verses he his Mistres wonne,
  Who doted on the Dolt beyond all measure.
  But see, for you to Heav'n for Phrase I runne,
  And ransacke all A P O L L O's golden Treasure;
       Yet by my Froth, this Foole his Love obtaines,
       And I lose you, for all my Wit and Paines.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  22

  WITH Fooles and Children good Discretion beares;     To Folly.
  Then honest People, beare with Love and Me,
  Nor older yet, nor wiser made by yeeres,
  Amongst the rest of Fooles and Children be:
  Love still a Baby, playes with Gawdes and Toyes,
  And like a Wanton, sports with ev'ry Fether;
  And Ideots still are running after Boyes,
  Then Fooles and Children fitt'st to goe together:
  He still as young as when he first was borne,
  No wiser I, then when as young as he.
  You that behold us, laugh us not to scorne,
  Give Nature thankes, you are not such as we:
       Yet Fooles and Children sometimes tell in play,
       Some wise in shew, more Fooles indeed then they.
  

  First appeared in 1602 Edition as No. 25
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 22

  23

  LOVE banish'd Heav'n, in Earth was held in scorne,
  Wand'ring abroad in Need and Beggerie;
  And wanting Friends, though of a Goddesse borne,
  Yet crav'd the Almes of such as passed by:
  I, like a Man devout, and charitable,
  Clothed the Naked, lodg'd this wand'ring Ghest,
  With Sighes and Teares still furnishing his Table,
  With what might make the Miserable blest.
  But this ungratefull, for my good desert,
  Intic'd my Thoughts, against me to conspire,
  Who gave consent to steale away my Heart,
  And set my Brest, his Lodging, on a fire.
       Well, well, my Friends, when Beggers grow thus bold
       No marvell then though Charitie grow cold.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 24
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 26
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 23

  24

  I HEARE some say, this Man is not in love;
  Who? can he love? a likely thing, they say;
  Reade but his Verse, and it will eas'ly prove.
  O, judge not rashly (gentle Sir) I pray,
  Because I loosely trifle in this sort,
  As one that faine his Sorrowes would beguile:
  You now suppose me all this time in sport,
  And please your selfe with this Conceit the while;
  Yee shallow Censures, sometime are yee not,
  In greatest Perils some Men pleasant be,
  Where Fame by Death is onely to be got,
  They resolute? so stands the case with me;
       Where other Men in depth of Passion crie,
       I laugh at Fortune, as in jest to die.
  

  First appeared in 1602 Edition as No. 27
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 24

  25

  O WHY should Nature niggardly restraine!
  That Foraine Nations rellish not our Tongue,
  Else should my Lines glide on the Waves of Rhone,
  And crowne the Piren's with my living Song:
  But bounded thus, to Scotland get you forth,
  Thence take you Wing unto the Orcades,
  There let my Verse get glory in the North,
  Making my Sighes to thaw the Frozen Seas;
  And let the Bards within that Irish Ile,
  To whom my Muse with fierie Wings shall passe,
  Call backe the stiffe-neck'd Rebels from Exile,
  And mollifie the slaught'ring Galliglasse;
       And when my flowing Numbers they rehearse,
       Let Wolves and Beares be charmed with my Verse.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 25
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 28
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 25

  26

  I EVER love, where never Hope appeares,     To Despaire.
  Yet Hope drawes on my never-hoping Care,
  And my Lives Hope would die, but for Despaire.
  My never-certaine Joy breeds ever-certaine Feares,
  Uncertaine Dread gives Wings up to my Hope;
  Yet my Hopes Wings are laden so with Feare,
  As they cannot ascend to my Hope's Sphere;
  Though Feare gives them more then a Heav'nly Scope,
  Yet this large Roome is bounded with Despaire,
  So my Love is still fett'red with vaine Hope,
  And Liberty deprives him of his Scope,
  And thus am I imprison'd in the Aire:
       Then, sweet Despaire, awhile hold up thy head,
       Or all my Hope for Sorrow will be dead.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 37
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 26
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 29
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 26

  27

  IS NOT Love here, as 'tis in other Clymes,
  And diff'reth it, as doe the sev'rall Nations?
  Or hath it lost the Vertue, with the Times,
  Or in this Iland alt'reth with the Fashions?
  Or have our Passions lesser pow'r then theirs,
  Who had less Art them lively to expresse?
  In Nature growne less pow'rfull in their Heires,
  Or in our Fathers did she more transgresse?
  I am sure my Sighes come from a Heart as true,
  As any Muse, that Memory can boast,
  And my Respects and Services to you
  Equall with his, that loves his Mistres most:
       Or Nature must be partiall in my Cause,
       Or onely you doe violate her Lawes.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  28

  TO SUCH as say, Thy Love I over-prize,
  And doe not sticke to terme my Prayses folly;
  Against these Folkes, that thinks themselves so wise,
  I thus oppose my Reasons forces wholly:
  Though I give more then well affords my state,
  In which expence, the most suppose me vaine,
  Which yeelds them nothing, at the easiest rate,
  Yet at this price returnes me treble gaine.
  They value not, unskilfull how to use,
  And I give much, because I gaine thereby:
  I that thus take, or they that thus refuse,
  Whether are these deceived then, or I?
       In ev'ry thing I hold this Maxim still,
       The Circumstance doth make it good, or ill.
  

  First appeared in 1602 Edition as No. 31
  In 1605-1619 Editions as No. 28

  29

  WHEN conqu'ring Love did first my Heart assayle,     To the Senses.
  Unto mine aid I summon'd ev'ry Sense,
  Doubting, if that proud Tyrant should prevayle,
  My Heart should suffer for mine Eyes Offence;
  But he with Beautie first corrupted Sight,
  My Hearing brib'd with her Tongues Harmonie,
  My Taste by her sweet Lips drawne with Delight,
  My Smelling wonne with her Breath's Spicerie:
  But when my Touching came to play his part,
  (The King of Senses, greater than the rest)
  He yeelds Love up the Keyes unto my Heart,
  And tells the other, how they should be blest.
       And thus by those of whome I hop'd for ayd,
       To cruell Love my Soule was first betray'd.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 29
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 33
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 29

  30

  THOSE Priests which first the Vestall Fire begun,     To the Vestals.
  Which might be borrow'd from no Earthly flame,
  Devis'd a Vessell to receive the Sunne,
  Being stedfastly opposed to the same:
  Where, with sweet Wood, layd curiously by Art,
  On which the Sunne might by reflection beat,
  Receiving strength from ev'ry secret part,
  The Fuell kindled with Celestiall Heat.
  Thy blessed Eyes, the Sunne which lights this Fire,
  My holy Thoughts, they be the Vestall flame,
  The precious Odors be my chaste Desire,
  My Brest's the Vessell, which includes the same:
       Thou art my V E S T A, thou my Goddesse art,
       Thy hallow'd Temple onely is my Heart.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 30
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 34
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 30

  31

  To the Criticke.
  ME THINKES I see some crooked Mimicke jeere,
  And taxe my Muse with this fantasticke Grace,
  Turning my Papers, askes, What have we heere?
  Making withall some filthy Antike Face.
  I feare no censure, nor what thou canst say,
  Nor shall my Spirit one jot of vigour lose.
  Think'st thou, my Wit shall keepe the pack-Horse Way,
  That ev'ry Dudgeon low Invention goes?
  Since Sonnets thus in Bundles are imprest,
  And ev'ry Drudge doth dull our satiate Eare;
  Think'st thou my Love shall in those Ragges be drest,
  That ev'ry Dowdy, ev'ry Trull doth weare?
       Up, to my Pitch, no common Judgement flyes,
       I scorne all Earthly Dung-bred Scarabies.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 31
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 35
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 31

  32

  To the River Ankor.
  OUR Flouds-Queen Thames for Ships & Swans is crowned,
  And stately Severne for her Shoare is praysed,
  The Crystall Trent, for Foords and Fish renowned,
  And Avons Fame, to Albions Cliffes is raysed,
  Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee,
  Yorke many Wonders of her Owse can tell,
  The Peake her Dove, whose Bankes so fertile be,
  And Kent will say, her Medway doth excell,
  Cotswold commends her Isis to the Tame,
  Our Northerne Borders boast of Tweeds faire Floud,
  Our Westerne Parts extoll their Wilis Fame,
  And the old Lea brags of the Danish Bloud;
       Ardens sweet Ankor, let thy glory bee,
       That faire Idea onely lives by thee.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 24
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 32
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 36
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 32

  33

  WHILST yet mine Eyes doe surfet with Delight,     To Imagination.
  My wofull Heart, imprison'd in my Brest,
  Wisheth to be transformed to my Sight,
  That it, like those, by looking might be blest:
  But whilst mine Eyes thus greedily doe gaze,
  Finding their Objects over-soone depart,
  These now the others Happinesse doe prayse,
  Wishing themselves, that they had beene my Heart;
  That Eyes were Heart, or that the Heart were Eyes,
  As covetous the others use to have:
  But finding Nature their request denyes,
  This to each other mutually they crave;
       That since the one cannot the other bee,
       That Eyes could thinke of that my Heart could see.
  

  In 1594-1599 Editions as No. 33
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 37
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 33

  34

  MARVELL not, Love, though I thy pow'r admire,     To Admiration.
  Ravish'd a World beyond the farthest Thought,
  And knowing more then ever hath beene taught,
  That I am onely starv'd in my desire;
  Marvell not, Love, though I thy pow'r admire,
  Ayming at things exceeding all perfection,
  To Wisdome's selfe to minister direction,
  That I am onely starv'd in my desire;
  Marvell not, Love, though I thy pow'r admire,
  Though my Conceit I further seeme to bend,
  Then possibly Invention can extend,
  And yet am onely starv'd in my desire:
       If thou wilt wonder, here's the wonder, Love,
       That this to me doth yet no wonder prove.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 34
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 38
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 34

  35

  To Miracle.
  SOME misbeleeving, and prophane in Love,
  When I doe speake of Miracles by thee,
  May say, that thou art flattered by mee,
  Who onely write, my skill in Verse to prove;
  See Miracles, yet unbeleeving, see,
  A dumbe-borne Muse made to expresse the Mind,
  A cripple Hand to write, yet lame by Kind,
  One by thy Name, the other touching thee;
  Blind were mine Eyes, till they were seene of thine,
  And mine Eares deafe, by thy Fame healed bee,
  My Vices cur'd, by Vertues sprung from thee,
  My Hopes reviv'd, which long in Grave had lyne:
       All uncleane Thoughts, foule Spirits cast out in mee,
       Onely by Vertue that proceeds from thee.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 12
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 35
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 39
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 35

  36

  Cupid conjured.
  THOU purblind Boy, since thou hast beene so slacke,
  To wound her Heart, whose Eyes have wounded me,
  And suff'red her to glory in my Wracke,
  Thus to my aid, I lastly conjure thee;
  By Hellish Styx (by which the T H U N D' R E R sweares)
  By thy faire Mothers unavoided Power,
  By H E C A T' S Names, by P R O S E R P I N E' S sad Teares,
  When she was rapt to the infernall Bower;
  By thine owne loved P S Y C H E S, by the Fires
  Spent on thine Altars, flaming up to Heav'n;
  By all true Lovers Sighes, Vowes, and Desires,
  By all the Wounds that ever thou has giv'n;
       I conjure thee by all that I have nam'd,
       To make her love, or C U P I D be thou damn'd.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  37

  DEARE, why should you command me to my Rest,
  When now the Night doth summon all to sleepe?
  Me thinkes this Time becommeth Lovers best;
  Night was ordayn'd, together Friends to keepe:
  How happy are all other living Things,
  Which though the Day dis-joyne by sev'rall flight,
  The quiet Ev'ning yet together brings,
  And each returnes unto his Love at Night?
  O, Thou that art so courteous else to all!
  Why should'st thou, Night, abuse me onely thus,
  That ev'ry Creature to his kind do'st call,
  And yet 'tis thou do'st onely sever us?
       Well could I wish, it would be ever Day,
       If when Night comes, you bid me goe away.
  

  First appeared in 1602 Edition as No. 41
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 37

  38

  SITTING alone, Love bids me goe and write;
  Reason plucks back, commanding me to stay,
  Boasting, that she doth still direct the way,
  Or else Love were unable to indite:
  Love growing angry, vexed at the Spleene,
  And scorning Reason's maymed Argument,
  Straight taxeth Reason, wanting to invent,
  Where she with Love conversing hath not beene;
  Reason reproched with this coy Disdaine,
  Despiseth Love, and laugheth at her Folly;
  And Love contemning Reasons reason wholly,
  Thought it in weight too light by many a Graine:
       Reason put back, doth out of sight remove,
       And Love alone picks reason out of love.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 31
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 37
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 42
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 38

  39

  SOME, when in Ryme, they of their Loves doe tell,
  With Flames and Lightnings their Exordiums paint,
  Some call on Heaven, some invocate on Hell,
  And Fates and Furies, with their woes acquaint,
  Elizium is too high a state for Me,
  I will not come in Stix or Phlegeton,
  The thrice-three Muses but too wanton be,
  Like they that Lust, I care not, I will none.
  Spightful E R I N N I S frights Me with her Lookes,
  My man-hood dares not with foule A T E mell,
  I quake to looke on H E C A T' S charming Bookes,
  I still feare Bug-beares in A P O L L O' S Cell.
       I pass not for M I N E R V A, nor A S T R E A,
       Onely I call on my divine I D E A.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 18
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 38
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 43
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 39

  40

  MY Heart the Anvile, where my Thoughts doe beate,
  My Words the Hammers, fashioning my desire,
  My Brest the Forge, including all the heate,
  Love is the Fewell, which maintaines the fire;
  My Sighes the Bellowes, which the Flame encreaseth,
  Filling mine Eares with Noise, and Nightly groning,
  Toyling with Paine, my Labour never ceaseth,
  In grievous Passions, my Woes still bemoning:
  My Eyes with Teares against the fire striving,
  Whose scorching gleed, my heart to Cinders turneth;
  But with those Drops, the Flame againe reviving,
  Still more and more it to my torment burneth:
       With S I S I P H U S thus doe I role the stone,
       And turne the Wheele with damned I X I O N.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 44
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 39
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 44
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 40

  41

  WHY doe I speake of Joy, or write of Love,     Loves Lunacie.
  When my Heart is the very Den of Horror,
  And in my Soule the paines of Hell I prove,
  With all his Torments and Infernall terror?
  What should I say? what yet remains to doe?
  My Braine is drie with weeping all too long,
  My Sighes be spent in utt'ring of my Woe,
  And I want words, wherewith to tell my Wrong:
  But still distracted in Loves Lunacie,
  And Bedlam-like, thus raving in my Griefe,
  Now calle upon her Haire, then on her Eye;
  Now call her Goddesse, then I call her Thiefe;
       Now I deny Her, then I doe confesse Her,
       Now doe I curse Her, then againe I blesse Her.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 43
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 40
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 45
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 41

  42

  SOME Men there be, which like my Method well,
  And much commend the strangenesse of my Vaine:
  Some say, I have a passing pleasing Straine,
  Some say, That in my Humor I excell;
  Some, who not kindly rellish my Conceit,
  They say (As Poets doe) I use to faine,
  And in bare words paint out my Passions paine;
  Thus sundry Men their sundry Minds repeat:
  I passe not, I, how Men affected bee,
  Nor who commends, or discommends my Verse;
  It pleaseth me, if I my Woes rehearse,
  And in my Lines, if she my love may see:
       Onely my comfort still consists in this,
       Writing her prayse, I cannot write amisse.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 28
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 42
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 47
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved back to No. 42

  43

  WHY should your faire Eyes with such sov'raigne grace
  Disperse their Rayes on ev'ry vulgar Spirit,
  Whilst I in darknesse, in the selfe-same place,
  Get not one glance, to recompence my Merit?
  So doth the Plow-man gaze the wand'ring Starre,
  And onely rest contented with the Light,
  That never learn'd what Constellations are,
  Beyond the bent of his unknowing Sight.
  O, why should Beautie (Custome to obey)
  To their grosse Sense apply her selfe so ill!
  Would God I were as ignorant as they,
  When I am made unhappy by my skill;
       Onely compell'd on this poore good to boast,
       Heav'ns are not kind to them, that know them most
  

  First appeared in 1605 Edition as No. 43, where it remained

  44

  WHILST thus my Pen strives to eternize thee,
  Age rules my Lines with Wrinkles in my Face,
  Where, in the Map of all my Miserie,
  Is model'd out the World of my Disgrace;
  Whilst in despite of tyrannizing Times,
  M E D E A-like, I make thee young againe,
  Proudly thou scorn'st my World-out-wearing Rimes,
  And murther'st Vertue with thy coy disdaine:
  And though in youth, my Youth untimely perish,
  To keepe Thee from Oblivion and the Grave,
  Ensuring Ages yet my Rimes shall cherish,
  Where I intomb'd, my better part shall save:
       And though this Earthly Body fade and die,
       My Name shall mount upon Eternitie.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 46
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 48
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 44

  45

  MUSES which sadly sit about my Chayre,
  Drown'd in the Teares, extorted by my Lines,
  With heavie Sighes whilst thus I break the Ayre,
  Painting my Passions in these sad Designes;
  Since she disdaines to blesse my happie Verse,
  The strong-built Trophies to her living Fame,
  Ever henceforth my Bosome be your Hearse,
  Wherein the World shall now intombe her Name;
  Inclose my Musike, you poore senselesse Walls,
  Sith she is deafe, and will not heare my Mones,
  Soften your selves with ev'ry Teare that falls,
  Whilst I like O R P H E U S sing to Trees and Stones;
       Which with my plaint seeme yet with pittie moved,
       Kinder then she whom I so long have loved.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 44
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 49
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 45

  46

  PLAINE-path'd Experience, th'unlearneds guide,
  Her simple Followers evidently shewes
  Sometimes what Schole-men scarcely can decide,
  Nor yet wise Reason absolutely knows:
  In making tryall of a Murther wrought,
  If the vile actors of the heynous deed
  Neere the dead Body happily be brought,
  Oft 't'ath been prov'd, the breathlesse Coarse will bleed.
  She comming more, that my poore Heart hath slaine,
  Long since departed (to the World no more)
  Th'ancient Wounds no longer can containe,
  But fall to bleeding, as they did before:
       But what of this? Should she to death be led,
       It furthers Justice, but helpes not the dead.
  

  First appeared in 1605 Edition as No. 46, where it remained

  47

  IN PRIDE of Wit, when high desire of Fame
  Gave Life and Courage to my lab'ring Pen,
  And first the sound and vertue of my Name
  Wonne grace and credit in the Eares of Men;
  With those the thronged Theaters that presse,
  I in the Circuit for the Lawrell strove:
  Where, the full Prayse I freely must confesse,
  In heat of Bloud, a modest Mind might move.
  With Showts and Claps at ev'ry little pawse,
  When the proud Round on ev'ry side hath rung,
  Sadly I sit, unmov'd with the Applause,
  As though to me it nothing did belong:
       No publike Glorie vainly I pursue,
       All that I seeke, is to eternize you.
  

  First appeared in 1605 Edition as No. 47, where it remained

  48

  CUPID, I hate thee, which I'de have thee know,
  A naked Starveling ever may'st thou be,
  Poore Rogue, goe pawne thy Fascia and thy Bow,
  For some few Ragges, wherewith to cover thee;
  Or if thou'lt not, thy Archerie forbeare,
  To some base Rustick doe thy selfe preferre,
  And when Corne's sowne, or growne into the Eare,
  Practise thy Quiver, and turne Crow-keeper;
  Or being Blind (as fittest for the Trade)
  Goe hyre thy selfe some bungling Harpers Boy;
  They that are blind, are Minstrels often made,
  So may'st thou live, to thy faine Mothers Joy:
       That whilst with M A R S she holdeth her old Way,
       Then, her blind Sonne, may'st sit by them, and play.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  49

  THOU Leaden Braine, which censur'st what I write,
  And say'st, my Lines be dull, and doe not move;
  I marvell not, thou feel'st not my Delight,
  Which never felt'st my fierie touch of Love:
  But thou, whose Pun hath like a Packe-Horse serv'd,
  Whose Stomack unto Gall hath turn'd thy Food,
  Whose Senses, like poore Pris'ners, hunger-starv'd,
  Whose Griefs hath parch'd thy Body, dry'd thy Bloud;
  Thou which has scorned Life, and hated Death,
  And in a moment Mad, Sober, Glad, and Sorrie;
  Thou which hast bann'd thy Thoughts, and curst thy Birth,
  With thousand Plagues, more then in Purgatorie:
       Thou, thus whose Spirit Love in his fire refines,
       Come thou and reade, admire, applaud my Lines.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 49, where it remained

  50

  AS IN some Countries, farre remote from hence,
  The wretched Creature, destined to die,
  Having the Judgement due to his Offence,
  By Surgeons beg'd, their Art on him to trie,
  Which on the Living works without remorse,
  First make incision on each mast'ring Veine,
  Then stanch the bleeding, then trans-pierce the Coarse,
  And with their Balmes recure the Wounds againe;
  Then Poyson, and with Physike him restore:
  Not that they feare the hope-lesse Man to kill,
  But their Experience to increase the more:
  Ev'n so my Mistres workes upon my Ill;
       By curing me, and killing me each How'r,
       Onely to show her Beauties Sov'raigne Pow'r.
  

  First appeared in 1605 Edition as No. 50, where it remained

  51

  CALLING to minde since first my Love begun,
  Th'incertaine Times oft varying in their Course,
  How Things still unexpectedly have runne,
  As't please the Fates, by their resistlesse force:
  Lastly, mine Eyes amazedly have seene
  E S S E X great fall, T Y R O N E his Peace to gaine,
  The quiet end of that Long-living Queene,
  This Kings faire Entrance, and on Peace with Spaine,
  We and the Dutch at length our Selves to sever;
  Thus the World doth, and evermore shall Reele:
  Yet to my Goddesse am I constant ever;
  How e're blind Fortune turne her giddie Wheele:
       Though Heaven and Earth, prove both to me untrue,
       Yet am I still inviolate to You.
  

  First appeared in 1605 Edition as 51, where it remained

  52

  WHAT do'st thou meane to Cheate me of my Heart
  To take all Mine, and give me none againe?
  Or have thine Eyes much Magike, or that Art,
  That what They get, They ever doe retaine,
  Play not the Tyrant, but take some Remorse,
  Rebate thy Spleene, if but for Pitties sake;
  Or Cruell, if thou can'st not; let us scorse,
  And for one piece of Thine, my whole heart take.
  But what of Pity doe I speake to Thee,
  Whose Brest is proofe against Complaint or Prayer?
  Or can I thinke what my Reward shall be
  From that proud Beauty, which was my betrayer?
       What talke I of a Heart, when thou hast none?
       Or if thou hast, it is a flinty one.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  53

  Cleere Ankor, on whose Silver-sanded shore,     Another to the
  My Soule-shrin'd Saint, my faire I D E A lies,      River Ankor.
  O blessed Brooke, whose milke-white Swans adore,
  Thy Cristall streams refined by her Eyes,
  Where sweet Myrrh-breathing Zephire in the Spring,
  Gently distills his Nectar-dropping showres,
  Where Nightingales in Arden sit and sing,
  Amongst the daintie Dew-impearled flowres;
  Say thus fair Brooke, when thou shalt see thy Queene,
  Loe, heere thy Shepheard spent his wandring yeeres;
  And in these Shades, deare Nymph, he oft had beene,
  And heere to Thee he sacrific'd his Teares:
       Faire Arden, thou my Tempe art alone,
       And thou, sweet Ankor, art my Helicon.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 13
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 48
  In 1602-1619 Editions, moved to No. 53

  54

  YET reade at last the storie of my Woe,
  The drerie abstracts of my endlesse Cares,
  With my Life's Sorrow interlined so,
  Smoake'd with my Sighes, and blotted with my Teares;
  The sad Memorialls of my Miseries,
  Pen'd in the griefs of mine afflicted Ghost,
  My Lives complaint in dolefull Elegies,
  With so pure Love, as Time could never boast;
  Receive the Incense which I offer here,
  In my strong Faith ascending to thy Fame,
  My Zeale, my Hope, my Vowes, my Prayse, my Pray'r,
  My Soule's Oblations to thy sacred Name:
       Which Name my Muse to highest Heav'ns shall rayse,
       By chaste Desire, true Love, and vertuous Prayse.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 1
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 49
  In 1602-1619 Editions, moved to No. 54

  55

  MY FAIRE, if thou wilt register my love,
  A World of Volumes shall thereof arise:
  Preserve my Teares, and thou thy Selfe shalt prove
  A second Floud, downe rayning from mine Eyes:
  Note but my Sighes, and thine Eyes shall behold
  The Sun-beames smothered with immortall Smoke,
  And if by Thee my Prayers may be enrol'd
  They Heaven and Earth to pitty shall provoke;
  Looke Thou into my brest, and Thou shalt see
  Chaste holy Vowes for my Soules sacrifice,
  That Soule (sweet Maid) which so hath honor'd Thee,
  Erecting Trophies to thy Sacred Eyes,
       Those Eyes to my Heart shining ever bright,
       When Darknesse hath obscur'd each other Light.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 2
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 50
  In 1602-1619 Editions, moved to No. 55

  56

  An allusion to the Eaglets.
  WHEN like an Eaglet I first found my Love,
  For that the vertue I thereof would know,
  Upon the Nest I set it forth, to prove
  If it were of that Kingly kind, or no:
  But it no sooner saw my Sunne appeare,
  But on her Rayes with open Eyes it stood,
  To shew, that I had hatch'd it for the Ayre,
  And rightly came from that brave mounting Brood;
  And when the Plumes were summ'd with sweet desire,
  To prove the Pynions, it ascends the Skyes;
  Doe what I could, it needsly would aspire
  To my Soules Sunne, those two Celestiall Eyes:
       Thus from my Brest, where it was bred alone,
       It after thee, is like an Eaglet flowne.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 3
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 51
  In 1602-1619 Editions, moved to No. 56

  57

  YOU have discern'd of my Minds inward Eyes,
  And yet your Graces outwardly Divine,
  Whose deare remembrance in my Bosome lyes,
  Too rich a Relique for so poore a Shrine:
  You, in whom Nature chose her selfe to view,
  When she her owne pefection would admire,
  Bestowing all her Excellence on you;
  At whose pure Eyes, Love lights his hallow'd Fire,
  Ev'n as a Man that in some Trance hath seene
  More then his wond'ring utt'rance can unfold,
  That rapt in Spirit, in better Worlds hath beene,
  So must your prayse distractedly be told;
       Most of all short, when I should shew you most,
       In your perfections so much am I lost.
  

  First appeared in 1605 Edition as No. 57, where it remained

  58

  IN FORMER times, such as had store of Coyne,
  In Warres at home, or when for Conquests bound,
  For fear that some their Treasure should purloyne,
  Gave it to keep to Spirits within the Ground;
  And to attend it, them as strongly ty'd,
  Till they return'd: Home when they never came,
  Such as by Art to get the same have try'd,
  From the strong Spirit by no meanes force the same;
  Neerer Men come, That further flyes away,
  Striving to hold it strongly in the Deepe:
  Ev'n as this Spirit, so you alone doe play
  With those rich Beauties Heav'n gives you to keepe:
       Pittie so left, to th'coldnesse of your Blood,
       Not to avail you, nor doe others good.
  

  First appeared in 1605 Edition as No. 58, where it remained

  59

  To Proverbe.
  AS LOVE and I, late harbour'd in one Inne,
  With Proverbs thus each other intertaine:
  In Love there is no luck, thus I begin,
  Faire words make Fooles, replyeth he againe;
  Who spares to speake, doth spare to speed (quoth I)
  As well (sayth he) too forward, as too slow;
  Fortune assists the boldest, I reply,
  A hastie Man (quoth he) ne'r wanted Woe;
  Labour is light, where Love (quoth I) doth pay,
  (Saith he) Light Burthen's heavy, if farre borne;
  (Quoth I) The Maine lost, cast the By away;
  You have spun a faire Thred, he replyes in scorne.
       And having thus a while each other thwarted,
       Fooles as we met, so Fooles againe we parted.
  

  First appeared in 1602 Edition as No. 58
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 59

  60

  DEFINE my Weale, and tell the joyes of Heaven,
  Expresse my Woes, and shew the paines of Hell,
  Declare what Fate unlucky Starres have given,
  And make a World upon my Life to dwell.
  Make knowne the Faith, that Fortune could not move,
  Compare my Worth with others base Desert,
  Let Vertue be the Touch-stone of my Love,
  So may the Heavens read wonders in my Heart;
  Behold the Clouds which have eclips'd my Sunne,
  And view the Crosses which my course doe let,
  Tell Me, if ever since the World begunne,
  So Faire a rising, had so Foule a set:
       And see if Time (if he would strive to prove)
       Can shew a Second to so pure a Love.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 49
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 53
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 59
  In 1605-1619 Editions, moved to No. 60

  61

  SINCE ther's no helpe, Come let us kisse and part,
  Nay, I have done: You get nor more of Me,
  And I am glad, yea glad withall my heart,
  That thus so cleanly, I my Selfe can free,
  Shake hands for ever, Cancell all our Vowes,
  And when We meet at any time againe,
  Be it not seene in either of our Browes,
  That We one jot of former Love reteyne:
  Now at the last gaspe, of Loves latest Breath,
  When his Pulse fayling, Passion speechlesse lies,
  When Faith is kneeling by his bed of Death,
  And Innocence is closing by his bed of Death,
       Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
       From Death to Live, thou might'st him yet recover.
  

  First appeared in 1619 Edition

  62

  WHEN first I Ended, then I first Began,
  Then more I Traveld, further from my Rest,
  Where most I Lost, there most of all I Wan,
  Pined with Hunger, rising from a Feast.
  Methinkes I Flie, yet want I legges to Goe,
  Wise in Conceit, in Act a very sot,
  Ravish'd with Joy amid'st a hell of Woe,
  What most I seeme, that surest am I Not.
  I build my Hopes a world above the Skie,
  Yet with the Mole I creepe into the Earth,
  Of Plenty I am starv'd with Penurie.
  And yet I Surfet in the greatest Dearth:
       I have, I want, Despaire, and yet Desire,
       Burn'd in a Sea of yce, and drown'd amidst a fire.
  

  In 1594 Edition as No. 50
  In 1599 Edition, moved to No. 54
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 60
  In 1605 Edition, moved to No. 61
  In 1619 Edition, moved to No. 62

  63

  TRUCE, gentle Love, a Parly now I crave,
  Methinkes 'tis long since first these Warres begun,
  Now thou, nor I, the better yet can have:
  Bad is the Match, where neither partie wonne.
  I offer free Conditions of faire Peace,
  My Heart for Hostage that it shall remaine,
  Discharge our Forces, here let Malice cease,
  So for my Pledge thou give me Pledge againe.
  Or if no thing but Death will serve thy turne,
  Still thirsting for subversion of my state;
  Doe what thou canst, raze, massacre, and burne;
  Let the World see the utmost of thy hate:
       I send defiance, since if overthrowne,
       Thou vanquishing, the Conquest is mine owne.
  

  First appeared in 1599 Edition as No. 55
  In 1602 Edition, moved to No. 61
  In 1605 Edition, moved to No. 62
  In 1619 Edition, moved to No. 63

  F I N I S.