Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Mother's wag, pretty boy,
Father's sorrow, father's joy.
When thy father first did see
Such a boy by him and me,
He was glad, I was woe;
Fortune changed made him so,
When he left his pretty boy,
Last his sorrow, first his joy.

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;
When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Streaming tears that never stint,
Like pearl-drops from a flint,
Fell by course from his eyes,

Tune on my pipe the praises of my Love,
Love fair and bright;
Fill earth with sound, and airy heavens above,
Heavens Jove's delight,
With Daphnis' praise.

To pleasant Tempe groves and plains about,
Plains shepherd's pride,
Resounding echoes of her praise ring out,
Ring far and wide
My Daphnis' praise.

When I begin to sing, begin to sound,
Sounds loud and shrill,
Do make each note unto the sky rebound,
Skies calm and still,
With Daphnis' praise.

Her tresses are like wires of beaten gold,
Gold bright and sheen,

Some say Love,
Foolish Love,
Doth rule and govern all the gods:
I say Love,
Inconstant Love,
Sets men's senses far at odds.
Some swear Love,
Smooth-fac'd Love,
Is sweetest sweet that men can have:
I say Love,
Sour Love,
Makes virtue yield as beauty's slave:
A bitter sweet, a folly worst of all,
That forceth wisdom to be folly's thrall.

Love is sweet.
Wherein sweet?
In fading pleasures that do pain?
Beauty sweet,
Is that sweet,
That yieldeth sorrow for a gain?
If Love's sweet,
Herein sweet,

Fair fields, proud Flora's vaunt, why is 't you smile,
when as I languish?
You golden meads, why strive you to beguile
my weeping anguish?
I live to sorrow, you to pleasure spring:
why do you spring thus?
What? will not Boreas, tempest's wrathful king,
take some pity on us,
And send forth winter in her rusty weed,
to wait my bemoanings;
Whiles I distressed do tune my country reed
unto my groanings?

But heaven, and earth, time, place, and every power
have with her conspired
To turn my blissful sweets to baleful sour,

Through the shrubs as I can cracke,
For my Lambes pretty ones,
Mongst many little ones,
Nymphes I meane, whose haire was blacke,
As the Crow,
Like the snow,
Her face and browes shine I weene,
I saw a little one,
A bonny pretty one,
As bright, buxome, and as sheene,
As was she
On her knee,
That lulled the God, whose arrowes warmes,
Such merry little ones,
Such faire fac'de pretty ones,
As dally in loves chiefest harmes:
Such was mine,
Whose gray eyne
Made me love. I gan to woo
This sweet little one,

Like to Diana in her summer weed,
Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye,
Goes fair Samela.
Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed,
When washed by Arethusa's fount they lie,
Is fair Samela.
As fair Aurora in her morning gray,
Decked with the ruddy glister of her love,
Is fair Samela.
Like lovely Thetis on a calmed day,
When as her brightness Neptune's fancy move,
Shines fair Samela.
Her tresses gold, her eyes like glassy streams,
Her teeth are pearl, the breasts are ivory
Of fair Samela.

Sir Eglamour, that worthy knight,
He took his sword and went to fight;
And as he rode both hill and dale,
Armid upon his shirt of mail,
A dragon came out of his den,
Had slain, God knows how many men!

When he espied Sir Eglamour,
Oh, if you had but heard him roar,
And seen how all the trees did shake,
The knight did tremble, horse did quake,
The birds betake them all to peeping--
It would have made you fall a weeping!

But now it is vain to fear,
Being come unto, "fight dog! fight bear!'
To it they go and fiercely fight

Rapier, lie there! and there, my hat and feather!
Draw my silk curtain to obscure the light,
Goose-quill and I must join awhile together:
Lady, forbear, I pray, keep out of sight!
Gall Pearl away, let one remove him hence!
Your shrieking parrot will distract my sense.

Would I were near the rogue that crieth, 'Black!'
'Buy a new almanac!' doth vex me too:
Forbid the maid she wind not up the jack!
Take hence my watch, it makes too much ado!
Let none come at me, dearest friend or kin:
Whoe'er it be I am not now within.

The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:

An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.

A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear tree broken by the storm.

I count those feathered balls of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream,
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.