I stood amaz'd and wondering at the sight,
While that a dame,

That shone like to the heaven's rich sparkling light, Discours'd the same;

And said, my friend, this worm within the fire,

Which lies
Content,

Is Venus' worm,

and represents desire.

A salamander is this princely beast:
Deck'd with a crown,

Given him by Cupid as a gorgeous crest
"Gainst fortune's frown,

Content he lies and bathes him in the flame,

And goes
Not forth,

For why, he cannot live without the same.

As he, so lovers lie within the fire

Of fervent love,

And shrink not from the flame of hot desire,
Nor will not move

From any

heat that Venus' force imparts,
But lie

Content

Within a fire, and waste away their hearts.

Up flew the dame, and vanish'd in a cloud,
But there stood I,

And many thoughts within my mind did shroud
Of love; for why,

I felt within my heart a scorching fire,

And yet,

As did

The salamander, 'twas my whole desire.

RADAGON IN DIANAM.

It was a valley gaudy green,
Where Dian at the fount was seen;
Green it was,

And did pass

All other of Diana's bowers,
In the pride of Flora's flowers.

A fount it was that no sun sees,

Circled in with

cypress trees, Set so nigh

As Phoebus' eye

Could not do the virgins scathe,
To see them naked when they bathe.

·

Are plagues that God sent down from high, To pester men with misery.

As thus the virgins did disdain
Lovers' joy and lovers' pain,
Cupid nigh
Did espy,

Grieving at Diana's song,
Slily stole these maids among.

His bow of steel, darts of fire,
He shot amongst them sweet desire,
Which straight flies

In their

eyes,

And at the entrance made them start,

For it ran from eye to heart.

Calisto straight supposed Jove

Was fair and frolic for to love;
Dian she

Scap'd not free,

For, well I wot, hereupon

She lov'd the swain Endymion;

Clytia Phoebus, and Chloris' eye
Thought none so fair as Mercury:
Venus thus

Did discuss

By her son in darts of fire,

None so chaste to check desire.

Dian rose with all her maids,
Blushing thus at love's braids :*
With sighs, all

Show their thrall;

And flinging hence pronounce this saw,
What so strong as love's sweet law?

MULIDOR'S MADRIGAL.

DILDIDO, dildido,

O love, O love,

I feel thy rage rumble below and above!

In summer time I saw a face,

Trop belle pour moi, helas, helas! Like to a ston'd horse was her pace: Was ever young man so dismay'd?

Her eyes, like wax torches, did make me afraid :
Trop belle pour moi, voila mon trepas.

Thy beauty, my love, exceedeth supposes;
Thy hair is a nettle for the nicest roses.
Mon dieu, aide moi !

That I with the primrose of my fresh wit
May tumble her tyranny under my feet:
He donc je serai un jeune roi.

Trop belle pour moi, helas, helas!

Trop belle pour moi, voila mon trepas.

braids] i. e. crafts, deceits, (see Steevens's note on

"Since

Frenchmen are so braid." Shakespeare's All's well that ends well, Act iv. sc. 2.) or, perhaps, upbraidings.

THE PALMER'S VERSES.

IN greener years, whenas my greedy thoughts
'Gan yield their homage to ambitious will,
My feeble wit, that then prevailed noughts,
Perforce presented homage to his ill;
And I in folly's bonds fulfill'd with crime,
At last unloos'd, thus spied my loss of time.

As in his circular and ceaseless ray

The year begins, and in itself returns, Refresh'd by presence of the eye of day,

That sometimes nigh and sometimes far sojourns;

So love in me, conspiring my decay,

With endless fire my heedless bosom burns,

And from the end of my aspiring sin,

My paths of error hourly do* begin.

ARIES.

When in the Ram the sun renews his beams,
Beholding mournful earth array'd in grief,
That waits relief from his refreshing gleams,
The tender flocks rejoicing their relief,
Do leap for joy and lap the silver streams:
So at my prime when youth in me was chief,
All heifer-like, with wanton horn I play'd,
And by my will my wit to love betray'd.

I do] The 4to. "doth."