Covncel Concerning Her Choise.[45]

Dear, Heaun-designed sovl! Amongst the rest Of suters that beseige your maiden brest, Why may not I My fortune try And venture to speak one good word, Not for my self, alas! but for my dearer Lord? You have seen allready, in this lower sphear Of froth and bubbles, what to look for here: Say, gentle soul, what can you find But painted shapes, Peacocks and apes; Illustrious flyes, Guilded dunghills, glorious lyes; Goodly surmises And deep disguises, Oathes of water, words of wind? Trvth biddes me say 'tis time you cease to trust Your soul to any son of dust. 'Tis time you listen to a brauer loue, Which from aboue Calls you vp higher And biddes you come And choose your roome Among His own fair sonnes of fire; Where you among The golden throng That watches at His palace doores May passe along, And follow those fair starres of your's; Starrs much too fair and pure to wait vpon The false smiles of a sublunary sun. Sweet, let me prophesy that at last t'will proue Your wary loue Layes vp his purer and more pretious vowes, And meanes them for a farre more worthy Spovse Then this World of lyes can giue ye: Eu'n for Him with Whom nor cost, Nor loue, nor labour can be lost; Him Who neuer will deceiue ye. Let not my Lord, the mighty Louer Of soules, disdain that I discouer The hidden art Of His high stratagem to win your heart: It was His heaunly art Kindly to cross you In your mistaken loue; That, at the next remoue Thence, He might tosse you And strike your troubled heart Home to Himself; to hide it in His brest: The bright ambrosiall nest Of Loue, of life, and euerlasting rest. Happy mystake! That thus shall wake Your wise soul, neuer to be wonne Now with a loue below the sun. Your first choyce failes; O when you choose agen May it not be amongst the sonnes of men.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

The first line, 'To Mistress M.R. Dear, Heav'n-designed soul,'

as in 1670, is not to be considered as an unrhymed line, but as the address or superscription, though so contrived as not to interfere with the metre, but to make a five-foot line with the two feet of the true first line of the poem. So Parolles prefaces his verse with

'Dian, the count's a fool and full of gold.'

(All's Well that ends Well, iv. 3.)

and Longaville (Love's Labour Lost) prefixes to his sonnet,

'O sweet Maria, empress of my love.'

In fact, it is the 'Madam' of a poetical epistle brought into metrical harmony with the verse. G.

DESCRIPTION OF A RELIGIOVS HOVSE AND CONDITION OF LIFE.