|
May therefore this be enough to testifie |
My true devotion, free from flattery; |
He that beleeves himselfe, doth never lie. |
|
To the Countesse of Salisbury. August. 1614. |
|
Faire, great, and good, since seeing you, wee see |
What Heaven can doe, and what any Earth can be: |
Since now your beauty shines, now when the Sunne |
Growne stale, is to so low a value runne, |
That his disshevel'd beames and scattered fires |
Serve but for Ladies Periwigs and Tyres |
In lovers Sonnets: you come to repaire |
Gods booke of creatures, teaching what is faire. |
Since now, when all is withered, shrunke, and dri'd, |
All Vertues ebb'd out to a dead low tyde, |
All the worlds frame being crumbled into sand, |
Where every man thinks by himselfe to stand, |
Integritie, friendship, and confidence, |
(Ciments of greatnes) being vapor'd hence, |
And narrow man being fill'd with little shares, |
Court, Citie, Church, are all shops of small-wares, |
All having blowne to sparkes their noble fire, |
And drawne their sound gold-ingot into wyre; |
All trying by a love of littlenesse |
To make abridgments, and to draw to lesse, |
Even that nothing, which at first we were;
|
[CW: Since] |