Like an unpractis'd swimmer, plunging still
With too much labour drowns for want of skill.
SHAKSPEARE.
* * * * *
FAME.
A lofty subject of itself doth bring
Grave words and weighty, of itself divine;
And makes the author's holy honour shine.
If ye would after ashes live, beware
To do like Erostrate, who burnt the fair
Ephesian Temple, or to win a name
To make of brass a cruel calf untame.
KING OF SCOTS.
* * * * *
SPRING.
The Winter with his grisly storms no longer dare abide,
The pleasant grass with lusty green the earth hath newly dyed,
The trees hath leaves, the boughs do spread, new changed is the year,
The water brooks are clean sunk down, the pleasant boughs appear,
The Spring is come, the goodly nymphs now dance in every place:
Thus hath the year most pleasantly so lately chang'd her face.
EARL OF SURREY.
* * * * *
THE SOUL.
--To show her powerful deity,
Her sweet Endymion more to beautify,
Into his soul the goddess doth infuse
The fiery nature of a heavenly muse;
Which the spirit labouring by the mind,
Partaketh of celestial things by kind:
For why the soul being divine alone,
Exempt from gross and vile corruption,
Of heavenly secrets incomprehensible,
Of which the dull flesh is not sensible,
And by one only powerful faculty,
Yet governeth a multiplicity,
Being essential uniform in all
Not to be severed or dividual;
But in her function holdeth her estate
By powers divine in her ingenerate;
And so by inspiration conceiveth,
What heaven to her by divination breatheth.
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