T'entertain the sense of wanton eyes,
Fuel of love, from whence lust's flames arise.

"Here I enclos'd, from all the world asunder,
The minotaur of Shame kept for disgrace;
The monster of Fortune, and the world's wonder,
Liv'd cloist'red in so desolate a case:
None but the king might come into the place,
With certain maids that did attend my need,
And he himself came guided by a thread.

"O Jealousy! daughter of Envy and Love,
Most wayward issue of a gentle sire;
Foster'd with fears, thy father's joys t' improve;
Mirth-marring monster, born a subtle liar;
Hateful unto thyself, flying thine own desire;
Feeding upon suspect, that doth renew thee;
Happy were lovers if they never knew thee.
"Thou hast a thousand gates thou enterest by,
Condemning trembling passions to our heart:
Hunder'd-ey'd Argus, ever waking spy,
Pale hag, infernal fury, pleasure's smart,
Envious observer, prying in every part;
Suspicious, fearful, gazing still about thee;

O would to God that love could be without thee.

"Thou did'st deprive (through false suggesting fear)
Him of content, and me of liberty,
The only good that women hold so dear,
And turn'st my freedom to captivity,
First made a prisoner ere an enemy:
Enjoin'd the ransom of my body's shame,
Which though I paid, could not redeem the same.
"What greater torment ever could have been,
Than to enforce the fair to live retir'd?
For what is beauty if it be not seen?
Or what is 't to be seen, if not admir'd?
And though admir'd, unless in love desir'd?
Never were cheeks of roses, locks of amber,
Ordain'd to live imprison'd in a chamber.

"Nature created beauty for the view,
(Like as the fire for heat, the Sun for light :)
The fair do hold this privilege as due,
By ancient charter, to live most in sight,
And she that is debarr'd it, hath not right.
In vain our friends from this do us dehort,
For beauty will be where is most resort.

"Witness the fairest streets that Thames doth visit,
The wondrous concourse of the glitt'ring fair;
For what rare woman, deck'd with beauty, is it,
That thither covets not to make repair?
The solitary country may not stay her.
Here is the centre of all beauties best,
Excepting Delia, left t' adorn the west.
"Here doth the curious, with judicial eyes,
Contemplate beauty gloriously attir'd:
And herein all our chiefest glory lies,
To live where we are prais'd and most desir'd.
O! how we joy to see ourselves admir'd,
Whilst niggardly our favours we discover;
We love to be belov'd, yet scorn the lover.

"Yet would to God my foot had never mov'd
From country safety, from the fields of rest;
To know the danger to be highly lov'd,
And live in pomp to brave among the best:
Happy for me, better had I been bless'd,

If I unluckily had never stray'd,
But liv'd at home a happy country maid.

"Whose unaffected innocency thinks

No guileful fraud, as doth the courtly liver!
She's deck'd with truth; the river, where she drinka
Doth serve her for her glass; her counsel-giver
She loves sincerely, and is loved ever.

Her days are peace, and so she ends her breath,
(True life that knows not what 's to die till death
"So should I never have been regist’red,
In the black book of the unfortunate;
Nor had my name, enrol'd with maids misled,
Which bought their pleasures at so high a rate:
Nor had I taught (through my unhappy fate)
This lesson (which myself learnt with expease)
How most it hurts, that most delights the seme
"Shame follows sin, disgrace is duly given;
Impiety will out, never so closely done:
No walls can hide us from the eye of Heaven;
For shame must end what wickedness begun;
Forth breaks reproach when we least think there
And this is ever proper unto courts,

That nothing can be done, but Fame reports.
"Fame doth explore what lies most secret hidden,
Ent'ring the closet of the palace-dweller;
Abroad revealing what is most forbidden:
Of truth and falsehood both an equal teller,
"T is not a guard can serve for to expell her:
The sword of justice cannot cut her wings,
Nor stop her mouth from uttering secret thing,
"And this our stealth she could not long concral,
From her whom such a forfeit most concern'd,
The wronged queen, who could so closely deal,
That she the whole of all our practice learu'd,
And watch'd a time when least it was discern'd,
In absence of the king, to wreak her wrong,
With such revenge as she desired long.

"The labyrinth she enter'd by that thread,
That serv'd a conduct to my absent lord;
Left there by chance, reserv'd for such a deed,
Where she surpris'd me whom she so abbor'd:
Enrag'd with madness, scarce she speaks a word,
But flies with eager fury to my face,
Offering me most unwomanly disgrace.
"Look how a tigress that hath lost her whelp,
Runs fiercely ranging through the woods astray;
And seeing herself depriv'd of hope or help,
Furiously assaults what 's in her way,
To satisfy her wrath (not for a prey);
So fell she on me in outrageous wise,
As could disdain and jealousy devise.

"And after all her vile reproaches us'd,
She forc'd me take the poison she had brought,
To end the life that had her so abus'd,
And free her fears, and ease her jealous thought;
No cruelty her wrath could leave unwrought;
No spiteful act that to revenge is common;
(No beast being fiercer than a jealous woman.)
"Here take,' said she,' thou impudent unclean,
Base graceless strumpet, take this next your heart;
Your love-sick heart, that overcharg'd hath been
With pleasure's surfeit, must be purg'd with art;
This potion hath a power that will convert

To nought those humours that oppress you so;
And, girl, I'll see you take it ere I go.

“What! stand you now amaz'd; retire you back?
Tremble you, minion? come, dispatch with speed;
There is no help, your champion now we lack,
And all these tears you shed will nothing steed;
Those dainty fingers needs must do the deed:
Take it, or I will drench you else by force,
And trifle not, lest that I use you worse.'

"Having this bloody doom from hellish breath,
My wofull eyes on every side I cast;
Rigour about me, in my hand my death,
Presenting me the horrour of my last;
All hope of pity and of comfort past.
No means, no power, no forces to contend,
My trembling hands must give myself my end.
"Those hands that beauty's ministers had been,
They must give death, that me adorn'd of late,
That mouth that newly gave consent to sin,
Must now receive destruction in thereat ;
That body which my lust did violate,
Must sacrifice itself t' appease the wrong.
(So short is pleasure, glory lasts not long.)

"And she no sooner saw I had it taken,
But forth she rushes (proud with victory)
And leaves m' alone, of all the world forsaken,
Except of Death, which she had left with me.
(Death and myself alone together be.)
To whom she did her full revenge refer.
Oh, poor weak conquest both for him and her!

"Then straight my conscience summons up my sin
Tappear before me in a hideous face;
Now doth the terrour of my soul begin,
When ev'ry corner of that hateful place
Dictates mine errour, and reveals disgrace;
Whilst I remain oppress'd in every part,
Death in my body, horrour at my heart.
"Down on my bed my loathsome self I cast,
The bed that likewise gives in evidence
Against my soul, and tells I was unchaste,
Tells I was wanton, tells I follow'd sense,
And therefore cast, by guilt of mine offence,
Must here the right of Heaven needs satisfy,
And where I wanton lay, must wretched die.

"Here I began to wail my hard mishap,
My sudden, strange, unlook'd-for misery,
Accusing them that did my youth entrap,
To give me such a fall of infamy.

And poor distressed Rosamond,' said I,
Is this thy glory got, to die forlorn

In deserts where no ear can hear thee mourn ?

"Nor any eye of pity to behold
The wofull end of thy sad tragedy;

But that thy wrongs unseen, thy tale untold,
Must here in secret silence bury'd lie,
And with thee, thine excuse together die ?
Thy sin reveal'd, but thy repentance bid,
Thy shame alive, but dead what thy death did.
"Yet breathe out to these walls the breath of moan,
Tell th' air thy plaints, since men thou canst not tell.
And though thou perish desolate alone,
Tell yet thyself, what thyself knows too well:
Utter thy grief, wherewith thy soul doth swell.

And let thy heart pity thy heart's remorse,
And be thyself the mourner and the corse.
"Condole thee here, clad all in black despair,
With silence only, and a dying bed;
Thou that of late, so flourishing, so fair,
Did'st glorious live, admir'd and honoured:
And now from friends, from succour hither led,
Art made a spoil to lust, to wrath, to death,
And in disgrace, forc'd here to yield thy breath.

"Did Nature (for this good) ingeniate,
To show in thee the glory of her best;
Framing thine eye the star of thy ill fate,
Making thy face the foe to spoil the rest?
O beauty! thou an enemy profess'd
To chastity, and us that love thee most,
Without thee, how w' are loath'd, and with thee lost!

"You, you that proud with liberty and beauty,
(And well may you be proud that you be so)
Glitter in court, lov'd and observ'd of duty;
Would God I might to you but ere I go
Speak what I feel, to warn you by my woe,
To keep your feet in cleanly paths of shame,
That not enticing may divert the same.

Seeing how 'gainst your tender weakness still,
The strength of wit, and gold, and all is bent;
And all th' assaults that ever might or skill
Can give against a chaste and clean intent;
Ah! let not greatness work you to consent.
The spot is foul, though by a monarch made,
Kings cannot privilege what God forbade.
"Lock up therefore the treasure of your love,
Under the surest keys of fear and shame:
And let no powers have power chaste thoughts to
To make a lawless entry on your fame. [move
Open to those the comfort of your flame,
Whose equal love shall march with equal pace,
In those pure ways that lead to no disgrace.

"For see how many discontented beds,
Our own aspiring or our parents' pride
Have caus'd, whilst that ambition vainly weds
Wealth and not love, honour and nought beside:
Whilst marry'd but to titles, we abide

As wedded widows, wanting what we have,
When shadows cannot give us what we crave.

"Or whilst we spend the freshest of our time,
The sweets of youth inplotting in the air;
Alas! how oft we fall, hoping to climb;
Or whither as unprofitably fair,
Whilst those decays which are without repair,
Make us neglected, scorned, and reprov'd.-
(And O, what are we, if we be not lov'd?)

"Fasten therefore upon occasions fit,
Lest this, or that, or like disgrace as mine,
Do overtake your youth, or ruin it,
And cloud with infamy your beauty's shine:
Seeing how many seek to undermine
The treasury that 's unpossess'd of any;
And hard 't is kept that is desir'd of many.
"And fly (O fly !) these bed-brokers unclean,
(The monsters of our sex) that make a prey
Of their own kind, by an unkindly mean;
And e'en (like vipers) eating out a way
Through th' womb of their own shame, accursed they

Live by the death of fame, the gain of sin, The filth of lust, uncleanness wallows in.

"As if 't were not enough that we (poor we)
Have weakness, beauty, gold, and men, our foes,
But we must have some of ourselves to be
Traitors unto ourselves, to join with those;
Such as our feeble forces do disclose,
And still betray our cause, our shame, our youth,
To lust, to folly, and to mens' untruth.

"Hateful confounders both of blood and laws,
Vile orators of shame, that plead delight;
Ungracious agents in a wicked cause,
Factors for darkness, messengers of night,
Serpents of guile, devils that do unite
The wanton taste of that forbidden tree,

Whose fruit once pluck'd, will show how foul we

"Amaz'd he stands, nor voice nor body stirs;
Words had no passage, tears no issue found,
For sorrow shut up words, wrath kept in tears;
Confus'd effects each other do confound;
Oppress'd with grief, his passions had no bound.
Striving to tell his woes, words would not come;
For light cares speak, when mighty griefs are dunt.
"At length extremity breaks out a way,
Through which, th' imprison'd voice with tears at
tended,

Wails out a sound that sorrows do bewray;
With arms across, and eyes to Heaven bended,
Vapouring out sighs that to the skies ascended;
Sighs (the poor ease calamity affords)
Which serve for speech, when sorrow wanteth words.

[bold

"" O Heavens!' quoth he, why do mine eyes be
The hateful rays of this unhappy Sun ?
Why have I light to see my sins control'd,
With blood of mine own shame thus wildly done?
How can my sight endure to look thereon?
Why doth not black eternal darkness hide
That from mine eyes, my heart cannot abide ?
"What saw my life wherein my soul might joy?
What had my days, whom troubles still afflicted,
But only this, to counterpoise annoy?

This joy, this hope, which death hath interdicted;
This sweet, whose loss hath all distress inflicted;
This, that did season all my sour of life,
Vex'd still at home with broils, abroad in strife.
"Vex'd still at home with broils, abroad in strife,
Dissention in my blood, jars in my bed;
Distrust at board, suspecting still my life,
Spending the night in horrour, days in dread;
(Such life hath tyrants, and this life I led.)
These miseries go mask'd in glittering shows,
Which wise men see, the vulgar little know.'
"Thus, as these passions do him overwhelm,
He draws him near my body to behold it;
And as the vine married unto the elm,
With strict embraces, so doth he infold it :
And as he in his careful arms doth bold it,
Viewing the face that even death commends,
On senseless lips, millions of kisses spends.

"Pitiful mouth!' saith he, that living gav'st
The sweetest comfort that my soul could wish:
O be it lawful now, that dead thou hav'st,
This sorrowing farewell of a dying kiss.
And you fair eyes, containers of my bliss,
Motives of love, born to be matched never,
Entomb'd in your sweet circles, sleep for ever.
"Ah! how methinks I see Death dallying seeks
To entertain itself in Love's sweet place;
Decayed roses of discolour'd cheeks,
Do yet retain dear notes of former grace:
And ugly Death sits fair within her face;
Sweet remnants resting of vermilion red,
That Death itself doubts whether she be dead.