_Venus._ Poets are scarce, when goddesses themselves Are forc'd to leave their high and stately seats, Plac'd on the top of high Olympus' Mount, To seek them out, to pen their champions' praise. The time hath been when Homer's sugar'd Muse Did make each echo to repeat his verse, That every coward that durst crack a spear, And tilt and tourney for his lady's sake, Was painted out in colours of such price As might become the proudest potentate. But now-a-days so irksome idless' slights, And cursèd charms have witch'd each student's mind, That death it is to any of them all, If that their hands to penning you do call. O Virgil, Virgil, wert thou now alive, Whose painful pen, in stout Augustus' days, Did dain[26] to let the base and silly fly To scape away without thy praise of her, I do not doubt but long or ere this time, Alphonsus' fame unto the heavens should climb; Alphonsus' fame, that man of Jove his seed, Sprung from the loins of the immortal gods, Whose sire, although he habit on the earth, May claim a portion in the fiery pole, As well as any one whate'er he be. But, setting by Alphonsus' power divine, What man alive, or now amongst the ghosts, Could countervail his courage and his strength? But thou art dead, yea, Virgil, thou art gone, And all his acts drown'd in oblivion. And all his acts drown'd in oblivion?[27] No, Venus, no, though poets prove unkind, And loth to stand in penning of his deeds, Yet rather than they shall be clean forgot, I, which was wont to follow Cupid's games Will put in ure[28] Minerva's sacred art; And this my hand, which usèd for to pen The praise of love and Cupid's peerless power, Will now begin to treat of bloody Mars, Of doughty deeds and valiant victories. _Enter_ MELPOMENE, CLIO, ERATO, _with their_ Sisters, _playing all upon sundry instruments_, CALLIOPE _only excepted, who coming last, hangeth down the head, and plays not of her instrument._ But see whereas[29] the stately Muses come, Whose harmony doth very far surpass The heavenly music of Apollo's pipe! But what means this? Melpomene herself With all her sisters sound their instruments, Only excepted fair Calliope, Who, coming last and hanging down her head, Doth plainly show by outward actions What secret sorrow doth torment her heart. [_Stands aside._ _Mel._ Calliope, thou which so oft didst crake[30] How that such clients cluster'd to thy court, By thick and threefold, as not any one Of all thy sisters might compare with thee, Where be thy scholars now become, I trow? Where are they vanish'd in such sudden sort, That, while as we do play upon our strings, You stand still lazing, and have naught to do?