must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen; for they are 45 cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

A Boast of Tamburlaine

(From Tamburlaine the Great, Part I; Act IV, Scene II)

Now clear the triple region of the air,

And let the Majesty of Heaven behold
Their scourge and terror tread on emperors.

Smile stars, that reigned at my nativity,

And dim the brightness of your neighbour lamps!
Disdain to borrow light of Cynthia !

For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth,
First rising in the East with mild aspect,
But fixed now in the meridian line,
Will send up fire to your turning spheres,
And cause the sun to borrow light of you.
My sword struck fire from his coat of steel
Even in Bithynia, when I took this Turk;
As when a fiery exhalation,

Wrapt in the bowels of a freezing cloud
Fighting for passage, makes the welkin crack,
And casts a flash of lightning to the earth:
But ere I march to wealthy Persia,
Or leave Damascus and the Egyptian fields,
As was the fame of Clymene's brain-sick son,
That almost burnt the axle-tree of heaven,
So shall our swords, our lances, and our shot
Fill all the air with fiery meteors:

Then when the sky shall wax as red as blood
It shall be said I made it red myself,

To make me think of nought but blood and war.

5

10

15

20

25

5

10

15

20

5

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Woods or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs;
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delights each May morning;
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

Songs from the Plays

(From Two Gentlemen of Verona)

Who is Silvia? what is she,

That all our swains commend her?

Holy, fair, and wise is she;

The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be.

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough,

Sonnets

XXIX

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, a

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

5

5

10

5

10