Short Poems

Look at my heart: see how it bleeds with tears,
Love's wound still open all these weary years.
Help me, dear maid, for I am sore distrest;
No surgeon's hand can lull my pain to rest.
I am poor Telephus; you Achilles be
And heal the wound your beauty made in me.

True martiall skill and Valor's most renownd,
While Fame a trumpet hath, or Arte a pen;
Though men be enulous or forgetfull found,
Yet Learning bath a clouen tongue, and then
(In firy language) she doth thundring sound
The fame of these nine worthies (men of men)
Then Death though in the graue thy glory bee,
Their fame shall there interre both it and thee.

C ORDELIO can abide no fashions now
But in his fashion Adam doth ensue;
Adam was proud, being naked; so is he,
And both from Paradice expellèd bee.

M EZENTIUS speakes no worde but God he mindes;
If not whole God yet (at the least) some part;
Nay all his souerall parts of sundry kindes,
Bloud, wounds death, soule, nayies, flesh, sides, guts and heart:
And though by him these parts be still exprest,
Yet is he but a most blaspheamous beast.

P HILARGUS is a subtill disputant
Passing well seene in logicall conclusions;
But yet he is a monstrous miscreant,
And in the State the seeker of confusions:
So fares it with each knaue, if learn'd he bee,
The better learnd the verier villaine hee.

I OUIUS will iest, but can abide no iesting:
And loues mens wiues but would have none loue his:
He loathes to feast, and yet he smels out feasting,
Nor spend himselfe but others spoyle he is.
O honyed humor! who will Iouius blame
To loue himselfe, sith none els doth the same.

A NAS the I atines call a ducke or drake:
And we a gull do English Annas make.

Annas hath long eares for all newes to passe:
His cares must needes be long for hee's an asse.

A NDOCIDES in Rhethoricke euer rowles:
Whereat admire poore bodies and good soules;
No word proceeds from his most fluent tong
But it is like the burden of the song
Call'd Callino, come from a forraine Land,
Which English people do not vnderstand.

P IGMALION carues, and that with mickle heed,
Dead stones like liuing men by Cunning's forces;
He makes stones men; but he good man (in deede)
Himselfe makes like a stone by sencelesse courses;
If he make men like stones, and stones like men
Pigmalion's pictures are his betters then.