"Good gentle Sir! your fortunes I bemoan, And wish my state so happy as to ease you! But She that grieved you, She it is alone, Whose breath can cure, and whose kind words appease you! Were I that She, heaven should my star extinguish, If you but loved me, ere I would relinquish. "Yet, noble Sir! I can no love protest, For I am wedded (O word full fraught with woe!) But in such manner as good love is blest, In honest kindness, I'll not prove your foe! Mine own experience doth my counsel prove, I know to pity, yet not care to love! "A sister, yet Nature hath given me, A virgin true, right fair, and sweetly kind. I for her good, Fortune hath driven me To be a comfort. Your heart shall be her mind. My woes yet tell me, she is best a maid!" And here she stopped her tears, her words thus stayed. DAIPHANTUS then, in number without measure, Began her praises, which no pen can end. "O Saint! O sun of heaven, and earth the treasure! Who lives, if not thy honour to defend? Ah me! what mortal can be in love so strange, That wedding Virtue will a wand'ring range? "She, like the morning, is still fresh and fair. The Elements, of her, they all do borrow; The Earth, the Fire, the Waters, and the Air; Their strength, heat, moisture, liveliness. No sorrow Can Virtue change! Beauty hath but one place. The heart's still perfect; though empaled the face. "O eyes! no eyes, but stars still clearly shining! O face! no face but shape of angels' fashion! O lips! no lips, but bliss by kiss refining! O heart! no heart, but of true love right Passion! O eyes, face, lips, and heart, if not too cruel; To see, feel, taste, and love earth's rarest jewel." This said, he paused, new praises now devising, Kneels to APOLLO for his skill and Art: When came the Ladies! At which, he arising, 'Twixt lip and lip, he had nor lips nor heart. His eyes, their eyes so sweetly did incumber: Although awaked, yet in a golden slumber. Most like a lion raised from slumbering ease, He cast his looks, fall grimly them among. At length, he firmly knit what might appease His brow; looked stedfastly and long At one, till all their eyes with his eyes met alike On fair VITULLIA, who his heart did strike. VITULLIA fair, yet brown; as mixed together As Art and Nature strove which was the purest. So sweet her smilings were, a grace to either! That heaven's glory in that face seemed truest. VENUS, excepted when the god her wooed, Was ne'er so fair! so tempting, yet so good!