Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Anonymous. 155753. A Praise of His Lady Tottel’s Miscellany ? by John Heywood
GIVE place, you ladies, and begone! | |
Boast not yourselves at all! | |
For here at hand approacheth one | |
Whose face will stain you all. | |
The virtue of her lively looks | 5 |
Excels the precious stone; | |
I wish to have none other books | |
To read or look upon. | |
In each of her two crystal eyes | |
Smileth a naked boy; | 10 |
It would you all in heart suffice | |
To see that lamp of joy. | |
I think Nature hath lost the mould | |
Where she her shape did take; | |
Or else I doubt if Nature could | 15 |
So fair a creature make. | |
She may be well compared | |
Unto the Phoenix kind, | |
Whose like was never seen or heard, | |
That any man can find. | 20 |
In life she is Diana chaste, | |
In troth Penelopey; | |
In word and eke in deed steadfast. | |
—What will you more we say? | |
If all the world were sought so far, | 25 |
Who could find such a wight? | |
Her beauty twinkleth like a star | |
Within the frosty night. | |
Her rosial colour comes and goes | |
With such a comely grace, | 30 |
More ruddier, too, than doth the rose, | |
Within her lively face. | |
At Bacchus’ feast none shall her meet, | |
Ne at no wanton play, | |
Nor gazing in an open street, | 35 |
Nor gadding as a stray. | |
The modest mirth that she doth use | |
Is mix’d with shamefastness; | |
All vice she doth wholly refuse, | |
And hateth idleness. | 40 |
O Lord! it is a world to see | |
How virtue can repair, | |
And deck in her such honesty, | |
Whom Nature made so fair. | |
Truly she doth so far exceed | 45 |
Our women nowadays, | |
As doth the jeliflower a weed; | |
And more a thousand ways. | |
How might I do to get a graff | |
Of this unspotted tree? | 50 |
—For all the rest are plain but chaff, | |
Which seem good corn to be. | |
This gift alone I shall her give; | |
When death doth what he can, | |
Her honest fame shall ever live | 55 |
Within the mouth of man. |