"See the chariot at hand here of Love, Wherein my lady rideth! Each that draws is a swan or a dove, And well the car Love guideth. As she goes, all hearts do duty Unto her beauty; And, enamoured, do wish, so they might But enjoy such a sight, That they still were to run by her side, Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. Do but look on her eyes, they do light All that Love's world compriseth! Do but look on her hair, it is bright As Love's star when it riseth!... Have you seen but a bright lily grow, Before rude hands have touched it? Have you marked but the fall o' the snow, Before the soil hath smutched it? Have you felt the wool of beaver? Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier? Or the nard in the fire? Or have tasted the bag of the bee? O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!"[336] What can be more lively, more unlike measured and artificial mythology? Like Theocritus and Moschus, they play with their smiling gods, and their belief becomes a festival. One day, in an alcove of a wood, Cupid meets a nymph asleep: "Her golden hair o'erspread her face, Her careless arms abroad were cast, Her quiver had her pillow's place, Her breast lay bare to every blast."[337] He approaches softly, steals her arrows, and puts his own in their place. She hears a noise at last, raises her reclining head, and sees a shepherd approaching. She flees; he pursues. She bends her bow, and shoots her arrows at him. He only becomes more ardent, and is on the point of seizing her. In despair, she takes an arrow, and buries it in her lovely body. Lo! she is changed, she stops, smiles, loves, draws near him. "Though mountains meet not, lovers may. What other lovers do, did they. The god of Love sat on a tree, And laught that pleasant sight to see."[338] A drop of archness falls into the medley of artlessness and voluptuous charm; it was so in Longus, and in all that delicious nosegay called the Anthology. Not the dry mocking of Voltaire, of folks who possessed only wit, and always lived in a drawing-room; but the raillery of artists, lovers whose brain is full of color and form, who, when they recount a bit of roguishness, imagine a stooping neck, lowered eyes, the blushing of vermilion cheeks. One of these fair ones says the following verses, simpering, and we can even see now the pouting of her lips: "Love in my bosom like a bee Doth suck his sweet. Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet. Within my eyes he makes his rest, His bed amid my tender breast, My kisses are his daily feast. And yet he robs me of my rest. Ah! wanton, will ye!"[339] What relieves these sportive pieces is their splendor of imagination. There are effects and flashes which we hardly dare quote, dazzling and maddening, as in the _Song of Songs_: "Her eyes, fair eyes, like to the purest lights That animate the sun, or cheer the day; In whom the shining sunbeams brightly play, Whiles fancy doth on them divine delights.