And with the bee doth rejoice
Every minute to change choice,
Counting he were then in bliss,
If that each fair fall were his.
Highly thus is love disgraced,
When the lover is unchaste,
And would taste of fruit forbidden,
'Cause the scape is easily hidden.
Though such love be sweet in brewing,
Bitter is the end ensuing;

For the humour of love he shameth,
And himself with lust defameth;
For a minute's pleasure gaining,
Fame and honour ever staining.
Gazing thus so far awry,
Last the chip falls in his eye;

Then it burns that erst but heat him,
And his own rod 'gins to beat him;
His choicest sweets turn to gall;
He finds lust his sin's thrall;
That wanton women in their eyes
Men's deceivings do comprise;
That homage done to fair faces
Doth dishonour other graces.
If lawless love be such a sin,
Cursed is he that lives therein,
For the gain of Venus' game
Is the downfall unto shame.'
Here he paused, and did stay;
Sighed and rose, and went away.

SONNET.

ON

women nature did bestow two eyes,

[shining, Like heaven's bright lamps, in matchless beauty Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise, And wary heads, made rare by art's refining. But why did nature, in her choice combining,

Plant two fair eyes within a beauteous face,
That they might favour two with equal grace?
Venus did soothe up Vulcan with one eye,
With th' other granted Mars his wishèd glee:
If she did so whom Hymen did defy,
Think love no sin, but grant an eye to me;
In vain else nature gave two stars to thee:
If then two eyes may well two friends maintain,
Allow of two, and prove na nature vain.

NA

ANSWER.

ATURE foreseeing how men would devise
More wiles than Proteus, women to entice,
Granted them two, and those bright-shining eyes,
To pierce into man's faults if they were wise;
For they with show of virtue mask their vice:
Therefore to women's eyes belong these gifts,
The one must love, the other see men's shifts.

Both these await upon one simple heart,
And what they choose, it hides up without change.
The emerald will not with his portrait part,
Nor will a woman's thoughts delight to range;
They hold it bad to have so base exchange:

[him,

One heart, one friend, though that two eyes do choose No more but one, and heart will never lose him.

AN ODE.

HAT is love once disgraced,

WHAT

But a wanton thought ill placed?

Which doth blemish whom it paineth,
And dishonours whom it deigneth;
Seen in higher powers most,
Though some fools do fondly boast,

That whoso is high of kin
Sanctifies his lover's sin.

Jove could not hide Io's scape,

Nor conceal Calisto's rape:

Both did fault, and both were framed
Light of loves, whom lust had shamed.
Let not women trust to men;

They can flatter now and then,
And tell them many wanton tales,
Which do breed their after bales.
Sin in kings is sin, we see,

And greater sin, 'cause great of 'gree:
Majus peccatum, this I read,

If he be high that doth the deed.
Mars, for all his deity,

Could not Venus dignify,

But Vulcan trapped her, and her blame
Was punished with an open shame:
All the gods laughed them to scorn
For dubbing Vulcan with the horn.
Whereon may a woman boast,
If her chastity be lost?

Shame awaiteth on her face,
Blushing cheeks and foul disgrace:
Report will blab,-This is she
That with her lust wins infamy.
If lusting love be so disgraced,
Die before you live unchaste;
For better die with honest fame,

Than lead a wanton life with shame.*

* This piece is, in a great measure, a repetition of Philomela's Second Ode, ante, p. 107. Some of the lines are nearly identical, and the subject, differently treated, is pretty much the same throughout. They are both homilies on the theme laid down in the previous ode:

Highly thus is love disgraced,
When the lover is unchaste.'

FROM MAMILLIA. SECOND PART.*

VERSES AGAINST THE GENTLEWOMEN OF SICILIA.

SINCE lady mild, too base in array, hath lived as an

exile,

None of account but stout: if plain, stale slut, not a

courtress.

Dames now a days, fie none, if not new guised in all points.

Fancies fine, sauced with conceits, quick wits very wily, Words of a saint, but deeds guess how, feigned faith to deceive men,

Courtsies coy, no vail, but a vaunt, tricked up like a Tuscan,

Paced in print, brave lofty looks, not used with the vestals,

In hearts too glorious, not a glance but fit for an

empress,

As minds most valorous, so strange in array, marry,

stately.

Up fro the waist like a man, new guise to be cased in a doublet,

Down to the foot perhaps like a maid, but hosed to the kneestead,

Some close breeched to the crotch for cold, tush, peace 'tis a shame, sir.

Hairs by birth as black as jet; what? art can amend

them;

* Mamillia. The Second Part of the Triumph of Pallas; wherein with perpetual fame the constancy of gentlewomen is canonized, and the unjust blasphemies of women's supposed fickleness, breathed out by divers injurious persons, by manifest examples clearly infringed. By Robert Greene, Master of Arts in Cambridge. 1593.-The first part of Mamillia was published in 1583, and was the earliest of Greene's printed works.

A perriwig frounced* fast to the front, or curled with

a bodkin,

Hats fro France, thick purledt for pride and plumed like a peacock,

Ruffs of a size, stiff-starched to the neck, of lawn, marry, lawless,

Gowns of silk; why those be too bad, side wide with a witness,

Small and gent i' the waist, but backs as broad as a burgess,

Needless noughts, as crisps and scarfs, worn a la morisco,

Fumed with sweets, as sweet as chaste, no want but abundance.

FROM THE ORPHARION.‡

ORPHEUS' SONG.

HE that did sing the motions of the stars,

Pale-coloured Phoebe's borrowing of her light,

Aspects of planets oft opposed in jars,

Of Hesper, henchman to the day and night; Sings now of love, as taught by proof to sing, Women are false, and love a bitter thing.

* Puckered or gathered; also, flounced, wrinkled. Fringed, or ornamented with a rich border.

Greene's Orpharion. Wherein is discovered a musical concord of pleasant histories, many sweet moods graced with such harmonious discords as agreeing in a delightful close, they sound both pleasure and profit to the ear. Herein also as in a Diateheron, the branches of virtue ascending and descending by degrees, are co-united in the glorious praise of woman-kind. With divers tragical and comical histories presented by Orpheus and Arion, being as full of profit as of pleasure. Omne tulit punctum, qui misquit utile dulci. Robertus Greene, in Artibus Magister. 1599.

I