Never beg, or humbly woo

With oaths and lies, as others do.

I could never walk alone;
Put a shirt of sackcloth on:
Never keep a fast, or pray
For good luck in love that day.

But have hitherto liv'd free
As the air that circles me:
And kept credit with my heart,
Neither broke i' th' whole, or part.

491. FRESH CHEESE AND CREAM.

WOULD ye have fresh cheese and cream ?
Julia's breast can give you them :

And, if more, each nipple cries:

To your cream here's strawberries.

492. AN ECLOGUE OR PASTORAL BETWEEN ENDYMION PORTER AND LYCIDAS HERRICK,

SET AND SUNG.

End. АH! Lycidas, come tell me why
Thy whilom merry oat

By thee doth so neglected lie,

And never purls a note ?

I prithee speak. Lyc. I will. End. Say on.

Lyc. 'Tis thou, and only thou,

That art the cause, Endymion.

End. For love's sake, tell me how.

Oat, oaten pipe.

Lyc. In this regard: that thou do'st play

Upon another plain,

And for a rural roundelay

Strik'st now a courtly strain.

Thou leav'st our hills, our dales, our bowers,
Our finer fleeced sheep,

Unkind to us, to spend thine hours
Where shepherds should not keep.

I mean the court: Let Latmos be
My lov'd Endymion's court.
End. But I the courtly state would see.
Lyc.
Then see it in report.

What has the court to do with swains,
Where Phyllis is not known?
Nor does it mind the rustic strains
Of us, or Corydon.

Break, if thou lov'st us, this delay.

End. Dear Lycidas, e're long

I vow, by Pan, to come away
And pipe unto thy song.

Then Jessamine, with Florabell,
And dainty Amaryllis,

With handsome-handed Drosomell

Shall prank thy hook with lilies.

Prank, bedeck.

Drosomell, honey dew.

Lyc. Then Tityrus, and Corydon,

And Thyrsis, they shall follow

With all the rest; while thou alone
Shalt lead like young Apollo.

And till thou com'st, thy Lycidas,
In every genial cup,

Shall write in spice: Endymion 'twas

That kept his piping up.

And, my most lucky swain, when I shall live to see Endymion's moon to fill up full, remember me: Meantime, let Lycidas have leave to pipe to thee.

493. TO A BED OF TULIPS.

BRIGHT tulips, we do know
You had your coming hither,
And fading-time does show

That ye must quickly wither.

Your sisterhoods may stay,

And smile here for your hour;

But die ye must away,

Even as the meanest flower.

Come, virgins, then, and see

Your frailties, and bemoan ye;

For, lost like these, 'twill be

As time had never known ye.

494. A CAUTION.

THAT love last long, let it thy first care be
To find a wife that is most fit for thée.
Be she too wealthy or too poor, be sure
Love in extremes can never long endure.

495. TO THE WATER NYMPHS DRINKING AT THE
FOUNTAIN.

REACH, with your whiter hands, to me
Some crystal of the spring;
And I about the cup shall see
Fresh lilies flourishing.

Or else, sweet nymphs, do you but this,

To th' glass your lips incline;

And I shall see by that one kiss
The water turn'd to wine.

496. TO HIS HONOURED KINSMAN, SIR

RICHARD STONE.

To this white temple of my heroes here,
Beset with stately figures everywhere

Of such rare saintships, who did here consume

Their lives in sweets, and left in death perfume,

Come, thou brave man! And bring with thee a

stone

Unto thine own edification.

High are these statues here, besides no less
Strong than the heavens for everlastingness:
Where build aloft; and, being fix'd by these,
Set up thine own eternal images.

497. UPON A FLY.

A GOLDEN fly one show'd to me,
Clos'd in a box of ivory,

Where both seem'd proud: the fly to have
His burial in an ivory grave;

The ivory took state to hold

A corpse as bright as burnish'd gold.
One fate had both, both equal grace;
The buried, and the burying-place.
Not Virgil's gnat, to whom the spring
All flowers sent to's burying;
Not Martial's bee, which in a bead
Of amber quick was buried;
Nor that fine worm that does inter
Herself i' th' silken sepulchre ;
Nor my rare Phil,* that lately was
With lilies tomb'd up in a glass;
More honour had than this same fly,
Dead, and closed up in ivory.

499. TO JULIA.

JULIA, when thy Herrick dies,
Close thou up thy poet's eyes:

And his last breath, let it be

Taken in by none but thee.

Virgil's gnat, see 256.

Martial's bee, see Note.

*Sparrow. (Note in the original edition.)