William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.
Elizabeth of BohemiaSir Henry Wotton (15681639)
Y
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light,
You common people of the skies;
What are you when the moon shall rise?
That warble forth Dame Nature’s lays,
Thinking your passions understood
By your weak accents; what’s your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise?
By your pure purple mantles known
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own;
What are you when the rose is blown?
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen,
Tell me, if she were not designed
Th’ eclipse and glory of her kind.