"Her cheeks like ripened lilies steeped in wine, Or fair pomegranate kernels washed in milk, Or snow-white threads in nets of crimson silk, Or gorgeous clouds upon the sun's decline. "Her lips are roses over-washed with dew, Or like the purple of Narcissus' flower... "Her crystal chin like to the purest mould, Enchased with dainty daisies soft and white, Where fancy's fair pavilion once is pight, Whereas embraced his beauties he doth hold. "Her neck like to an ivory shining tower, Where through with azure veins sweet nectar runs, Or like the down of swans where Senesse woons, Or like delight that doth itself devour. "Her paps are like fair apples in the prime, As round as orient pearls, as soft as down; They never vail their fair through winter's frown, But from their sweets love sucked his summer time."[340] "What need compare, where sweet exceeds compare? Who draws his thoughts of love from senseless things, Their pomp and greatest glories doth impair, And mounts love's heaven with overladen wings."[341] I can well believe that things had no more beauty then than now; but I am sure that men found them more beautiful. When the power of embellishment is so great, it is natural that they should paint the sentiment which unites all joys, whither all dreams converge--ideal love, and in particular, artless and happy love. Of all sentiments, there is none for which we have more sympathy. It is of all the most simple and sweet. It is the first motion of the heart, and the first word of nature. It is made up of innocence and self-abandonment. It is clear of reflection and effort. It extricates us from complicated passion, contempt, regret, hate, violent desires. It penetrates us, and we breathe it as the fresh breath of the morning wind, which has swept over flowery meads. The knights of this perilous court inhaled it, and were enraptured, and so rested in the contrast from their actions and their dangers. The most severe and tragic of their poets turned aside to meet it, Shakespeare among the evergreen oaks of the forest of Arden,[342] Ben Jonson in the woods of Sherwood,[343] amid the wide shady glades, the shining leaves and moist flowers, trembling on the margin of lonely springs. Marlowe himself, the terrible painter of the agony of Edward II, the impressive and powerful poet, who wrote "Faustus, Tamerlane" and the "Jew of Malta," leaves his sanguinary dramas, his high-sounding verse, his images of fury, and nothing can be more musical and sweet than his song. A shepherd, to gain his lady-love, says to her: