No More Learning

Yet ere ye enter give us leave to set
Upon your head this flowery coronet;
To make this neat distinction from the rest,
You are the prime and princess of the feast;
To which with silver feet lead you the way,
While sweet-breath nymphs attend on you this day.
This is your hour, and best you may command,
Since you are lady of this fairy land.
Full mirth wait on you, and such mirth as shall
Cherish the cheek but make none blush at all.

_Meadow-verse_, to be recited at a rustic feast.


355. THE PARTING VERSE, THE FEAST THERE ENDED.

Loth to depart, but yet at last each one
Back must now go to's habitation;
Not knowing thus much when we once do sever,
Whether or no that we shall meet here ever.
As for myself, since time a thousand cares
And griefs hath filed upon my silver hairs,
'Tis to be doubted whether I next year
Or no shall give ye a re-meeting here.
If die I must, then my last vow shall be,
You'll with a tear or two remember me.
Your sometime poet; but if fates do give
Me longer date and more fresh springs to live,
Oft as your field shall her old age renew,
Herrick shall make the meadow-verse for you.


356. UPON JUDITH. EPIG.

Judith has cast her old skin and got new,
And walks fresh varnish'd to the public view;
Foul Judith was and foul she will be known
For all this fair transfiguration.


359.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE PHILIP, EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY.

How dull and dead are books that cannot show
A prince of Pembroke, and that Pembroke you!
You who are high born, and a lord no less
Free by your fate than fortune's mightiness,
Who hug our poems, honour'd sir, and then
The paper gild and laureate the pen.
Nor suffer you the poets to sit cold,
But warm their wits and turn their lines to gold.
Others there be who righteously will swear
Those smooth-paced numbers amble everywhere,
And these brave measures go a stately trot;
Love those, like these, regard, reward them not.
But you, my lord, are one whose hand along
Goes with your mouth or does outrun your tongue;
Paying before you praise, and, cockering wit,
Give both the gold and garland unto it.

_Cockering_, pampering.


360. AN HYMN TO JUNO.

Stately goddess, do thou please,
Who are chief at marriages,
But to dress the bridal bed
When my love and I shall wed;
And a peacock proud shall be
Offered up by us to thee.


362. UPON SAPPHO SWEETLY PLAYING AND SWEETLY SINGING.

When thou dost play and sweetly sing--
Whether it be the voice or string
Or both of them that do agree
Thus to entrance and ravish me--
This, this I know, I'm oft struck mute,
And die away upon thy lute.


364. CHOP-CHERRY.

Thou gav'st me leave to kiss,
Thou gav'st me leave to woo;
Thou mad'st me think, by this
And that, thou lov'dst me too.