Harke how the birds doe sing, and marke then how
Jumpe with the modulation of their layes,
They lightly leape, and skip from bow to bow:
Yet doe the cranes deserve a greater praise
Which keepe such measure in their ayrie wayes,
As when they all in order ranked are,
They make a perfect forme triangular.

In the chief angle flyes the watchfull guide,
And all the followers their heads doe lay
On their foregoers backs, on eyther side;
But for the captaine hath no rest to stay,
His head forewearied with the windy way,

Behold the Worlde , how it is whirled round ,
And for it is so whirl'd, is named so;
In whose large volume many rules are found
Of this new Art, which it doth fairly show;
For your quick eyes in wandring too and fro
From East to West, on no one thing can glaunce
But if you marke it well, it seemes to daunce.

First you see fixt in this huge mirrour blew
Of trembling lights, a number numberless:
Fixt they are nam'd, but with a name untrue,
For they all moove and in a Daunce expresse

Sir, whatsoever you are pleas'd to do
It is your special praise that you are bent
And sadly set your princely mind thereto:
Which makes you in each thing so excellent.
Hence is it that you came so soon to be
A man-at-arms in every point aright;
The fairest flower of noble chivalry,
And of Saint George his band, the bravest knight.
And hence it is, that all your youthful train
In activeness and grace you do excel;
When you do courtly dancings entertain
Then Dancing's praise may be presented well
To you, whose action adds more praise thereto

To whom shall I this dancing poem send,
This sudden, rash, half-capriole of my wit?
To you, first mover and sole cause of it,
Mine-own-selve's better half, my dearest friend.
Oh would you yet my Muse some honey lend
From your mellifluous tongue, whereon doth sit
Suada in majesty, that I may fit
These harsh beginnings with a sweeter end!
You know the modest sun full fifteen times
Blushing did rise and blushing did descend
While I in making of these ill-made rimes
My golden hours unthriftily did spend:

Dauncing (bright Lady) then began to bee,
When the first seeds whereof the World did spring,
The fire, ayre, earth, and water--did agree,
By Love's perswasion,--Nature's mighty King,--
To leave their first disordred combating;
And in a daunce such measure to observe,
As all the world their motion should perserve.

Since when, they still are carried in a round,
And changing, come one in another's place;
Yet doe they neither mingle nor confound,
But every one doth keepe the bounded space
Wherein the Daunce doth bid it turne or trace;

For lo! the sea that fleets about the land,
And like a girdle clips her solid waist,
Music and measure both doth undertand;
For his great crystal eye is always cast
Up to the moon, and on her fixed fast;
And as she danceth in her pallid sphere,
So danceth he about the centre here.

Sometimes his proud green waves in order set,
One after other, flow unto the shore;
Which when they have with many kisses wet,
They ebb away in order, as before;
And to make known his courtly love the more,
He oft doth lay aside his three-forked mace,

This is true Love, by that true Cupid got,
Which danceth galliards in your amorous eyes,
But to your frozen heart approacheth not;
Only your heart he dares not enterprize,
And yet through every other part he flies,
And everywhere he nimbly danceth now,
That in yourself, yourself perceive not how.

For your sweet beauty, daintily transfused
With due proportion throughout every part,
What is it but a dance where Love hath used
His finer cunning and more curious art;
Where all the elements themselves impart,

Where lives the man that never yet did hear
Of chaste Penelope, Ulysses' queen?
Who kept her faith unspotted twenty year,
Till he returned, that far away had been,
And many men and many towns had seen;
Ten year at siege of Troy he lingering lay,
And ten year in the midland sea did stray.

Homer, to whom the Muses did carouse
A great deep cup with heavenly nectar filled:
The greatest deepest cup in Jove's great house,
(For Jove himself had so expressly willed,)
He drank off all, ne let one drop be spilled;

Ah well, my One-way, there you have my song.
I cannot now this argument prolong.
I have a date with another book — Next week
I am due upon One-way complaints to speak —
What the One-Way must guard against as such —
Pathology of Fronts — Why use a crutch?
Problems of equilibrium for those
Who go upright, and follow their own nose;
Care of the sick, who front-ways-up repose.
Treatment for maladies of the bust and belly,
And how to act from Sundown to revelly —
A strictly progressive one-way slumber-chart —

Gone with his dogsrib now is the penny-shocker —
He is only a house breaking half-wit, an unlocker
By skeleton keys. Of the " New" a spirited faker —
Which is no better than an " antique" shammer and crack-maker!
No builder he, but can think up a concoction —
Polish a scrapheap, bought at a bankrupt-auction.
Follow a blind engineer — with clapboard and glass,
Tinfoil and sheetiron, vamp up an architect's farce!
A spoiler, with patchwork devices, such he has been
Since first, a slick understudy, he came on the scene.