The Earl of Surrey, that renowned lord,
Th' old English glory bravely that restored,
That prince and poet (a name more divine),
Falling in love with beauteous Geraldine
Of the Geraldi, which derive their name
From Florence, whither, to advance her fame,
He travels, and in public jousts maintained
Her beauty peerless, which by arms he gained;
But staying long, fair Italy to see,
To let her know him constant still to be,
From Tuscany this letter to her writes,
Which her rescription instantly invites.

From learned Florence, long time rich in fame,
From whence thy race, thy noble grandsires, came,
To famous England, that kind nurse of mine,
Thy Surrey sends to heavenly Geraldine;
Yet let not Tuscan think I do it wrong,
That I from thence write in my native tongue,
That in these harsh-tuned cadences I sing,
Sitting so near the Muses' sacred spring;
But rather think itself adorned thereby,
That England reads the praise of Italy.
Though to the Tuscans I the smoothness grant,
Our dialect no majesty doth want
To set thy praises in as high a key,
As France, or Spain, or Germany, or they.
What day I quit the Foreland of fair Kent,
And that my ship her course for Flanders bent,
Yet think I with how many a heavy look
My leave of England and of thee I took,
And did entreat the tide, if it might be,
But to convey me one sight back to thee.
Up to the deck a billow lightly skips,
Taking my sigh, and down again it slips;
Into the gulf itself it headlong throws,
And as a post to England-ward it goes.
As I sat wondering how the rough seas stirred,
I might far off perceive a little bird,
Which, as she fain from shore to shore would fly,
Had lost herself in the broad vasty sky,
Her feeble wing beginning to deceive her,
The seas of life still gaping to bereave her;
Unto the ship she makes, which she discovers,
And there, poor fool, a while for refuge hovers;
And when at length her flagging pinion fails,
Panting she hangs upon the rattling sails,
And being forced to loose her hold with pain,
Yet beaten off she straight lights on again,
And tossed with flaws, with storms, with wind, with weather,
Yet still departing thence, still turneth thither;
Now with the poop, now with the prow doth bear,
Now on this side, now that, now here, now there.
Methinks these storms should be my sad depart,
The silly helpless bird is my poor heart,
The ship to which for succour it repairs,
That is yourself, regardless of my cares.
Of every surge doth fall, or wave doth rise,
To some one thing I sit and moralize.
When for thy love I left the Belgic shore,
Divine Erasmus and our famous More,
Whose happy presence gave me such delight
As made a minute of a winter's night,
With whom a while I stayed at Rotterdam,
Now so renowned by Erasmus' name,
Yet every hour did seem a world of time,
Till I had seen that soul-reviving clime,
And thought the foggy Netherlands unfit,
A watery soil to clog a fiery wit.
And as that wealthy Germany I passed,
Coming unto the Emperor's court at last,
Great learned Agrippa, so profound in art,
Who the infernal secrets doth impart,
When of thy health I did desire to know,
Me in a glass my Geraldine did show,
Sick in thy bed and, for thou couldst not sleep,
By a wax taper set the light to keep.
I do remember thou didst read that ode
Sent back whilst I in Thanet made abode,
Where when thou camest unto that word of love,
Even in thine eyes I saw how passion strove.
That snowy lawn which covered thy bed,
Methought looked white, to see thy cheek so red;
Thy rosy cheek, oft changing in my sight,
Yet still was red, to see the lawn so white;
The little taper, which should give thee light,
Methought waxed dim, to see thine eye so bright;
Thine eye again supplied the taper's turn,
And with his beams more brightly made it burn;
The shrugging air about thy temples hurls,
And wrapped thy breath in little clouded curls,
And as it did ascend, it straight did seize it,
And as it sunk, it presently did raise it.
Canst thou by sickness banish beauty so?
Which if put from thee knows not where to go,
To make her shift and for her succour seek
To every rivelled face, each bankrupt cheek.
If health preserved, thou beauty still dost cherish,
If that neglected, beauty soon doth perish.
Care draws on care, woe comforts woe again,
Sorrow breeds sorrow, one grief brings forth twain;
If live or die, as thou dost so do I,
If live, I live, and if thou die, I die;
One heart, one love, one joy, one grief, one troth,
One good, one ill, one life, one death to both.
If Howard's blood thou hold'st as but too vile,
Or not esteem'st of Norfolk's princely style;
If Scotland's coat no mark of fame can lend,
That lion placed in our bright silver bend,
(Which as a trophy beautifies our shield
Since Scottish blood discoloured Flodden field,
When the proud Cheviot our brave ensign bare
As a rich jewel in a lady's hair,
And did fair Bramston's neighbouring valleys choke
With clouds of cannons, fire-disgorged smoke),
Or Surrey's earldom insufficient be
And not a dower so well contenting thee:
Yet am I one of great Apollo's heirs,
The sacred Muses challenge me for theirs.
By princes my immortal lines are sung,
My flowing verses graced with every tongue;
The little children, when they learn to go,
By painful mothers daded to and fro,
Are taught my sugared numbers to rehearse,
And have their sweet lips seasoned with my verse.
When heaven would strive to do the best it can,
And put an angel's spirit into a man,
The utmost power it hath it then doth spend,
When to the world a poet it doth intend;
That little difference 'twixt the gods and us,
By them confirmed, distinguished only thus:
Whom they, in birth, ordain to happy days,
The gods commit their glory to our praise;
T' eternal life when they dissolve their breath,
We likewise share a second power by death.
When time shall turn those amber locks to gray,
My verse again shall gild and make them gay,
And trick them up in knotted curls anew,
And to thy autumn give a summer's hue;
That sacred power that in my ink remains
Shall put fresh blood into thy withered veins,
And on thy red decayed, thy whiteness dead,
Shall set a white more white, a red more red.
When thy dim sight thy glass cannot descry,
Nor thy crazed mirror can discern thine eye,
My verse, to tell th' one what the other was,
Shall represent them both, thine eye and glass;
Where both thy mirror and thine eye shall see
What once thou saw'st in that, that saw in thee;
And to them both shall tell the simple truth,
What that in pureness was, what thou in youth.
If Florence once should lose her old renown,
As famous Athens, now a fisher town,
My lines for thee a Florence shall erect,
Which great Apollo ever shall protect,
And with the numbers from my pen that falls
Bring marble mines to re-erect those walls.
Nor beauteous Stanhope, whom all tongues report
To be the glory of the English court,
Shall by our nation be so much admired,
If ever Surrey truly were inspired.
And famous Wyatt, who in numbers sings
To that enchanting Thracian harper's strings,
To whom Phoebus, the poets' god, did drink
A bowl of nectar filled up to the brink,
And sweet-tongued Bryan, whom the Muses kept
And in his cradle rocked him whilst he slept,
In sacred verses most divinely penned,
Upon thy praises ever shall attend.
What time I came into this famous town
And made the cause of my arrival known,
Great Medices a list for triumphs built;
Within the which, upon a tree of gilt,
Which was with sundry rare devices set,
I did erect thy lovely counterfeit
To answer those Italian dames' desire,
Which daily came thy beauty to admire;
By which my lion, in his gaping jaws,
Held up my lance, and in his dreadful paws
Reacheth my gauntlet unto him that dare
A beauty with my Geraldine's compare.
Which when each manly valiant arm assays,
After so many brave triumphant days
The glorious prize upon my lance I bare,
By herald's voice proclaimed to be thy share.
The shivered staves, here for thy beauty broke,
With fierce encounters passed at every shock,
When stormy courses answered cuff for cuff,
Denting proud beavers with the counter-buff,
Upon an altar, burnt with holy flame,
I sacrificed as incense to thy fame;
Where, as the phoenix from her spiced fume
Renews herself in that she doth consume,
So from these sacred ashes live we both,
Even as that one Arabian wonder doth.
When to my chamber I myself retire,
Burnt with the sparks that kindled all this fire,
Thinking of England, which my hope contains,
The happy isle where Geraldine remains,
Of Hunsdon, where those sweet celestial eyne
At first did pierce this tender breast of mine,
Of Hampton Court and Windsor, where abound
All pleasures that in paradise were found:
Near that fair castle is a little grove,
With hanging rocks all covered from above,
Which on the bank of goodly Thames doth stand,
Clipped by the water from the other land;
Whose bushy top doth bid the sun forbear
And checks his proud beams that would enter there;
Whose leaves, still muttering as the air doth breathe,
With the sweet bubbling of the stream beneath,
Doth rock the senses, whilst the small birds sing,
Lulled asleep with gentle murmuring;
Where light-foot fairies sport at prison-base
(No doubt there is some power frequents the place):
There the soft poplar and smooth beech do bear
Our names together carved everywhere,
And gordian knots do curiously entwine
The names of Henry and of Geraldine.
O! let this grove in happy times to come
Be called the lovers' blest Elysium;
Whither my mistress wonted to resort,
In summer's heat in those sweet shades to sport.
A thousand sundry names I have it given,
And called it Wonder-hider, Cover-heaven,
The roof where beauty her rich court doth keep,
Under whose compass all the stars do sleep.
There is one tree which now I call to mind,
Doth bear these verses carved in his rind:
When Geraldine shall sit in thy fair shade,
Fan her sweet tresses with perfumed air,
Let thy large boughs a canopy be made
To keep the sun from gazing on my fair;
And when thy spreading branched arms be sunk,
And thou no sap nor pith shalt more retain,
Even from the dust of thy unwieldy trunk
I will renew thee, phoenix-like, again,
And from thy dry decayed root will bring
A new-born stem, another Aeson's spring.
I find no cause, nor judge I reason why
My country should give place to Lombardy;
As goodly flowers on Thamesis do grow
As beautify the banks of wanton Po;
As many nymphs as haunt rich Arno's strand,
By silver Severn tripping hand in hand;
Our shade's as sweet, though not to us so dear,
Because the sun hath greater power there;
This distant place doth give me greater woe,
Far off, my sighs the farther have to go.
Ah absence! why thus shouldst thou seem so long?
Or wherefore shouldst thou offer time such wrong,
Summer so soon to steal on winter's cold,
Or winter's blasts so soon make summer old?
Love did us both with one self-arrow strike,
Our wounds both one, our cure should be the like,
Except thou hast found out some mean by art,
Some powerful medicine to withdraw the dart;
But mine is fixed, and absence being proved,
It sticks too fast, it cannot be removed.
Adieu, adieu! from Florence when I go
By my next letters Geraldine shall know,
Which if good fortune shall by course direct,
From Venice by some messenger expect;
Till when, I leave thee to thy heart's desire--
By him that lives thy virtues to admire.