English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 147. Elizabeth of Bohemia |
| | | Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639) |
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| YOU meaner beauties of the night, | |
| That poorly satisfy our eyes | |
| More by your number than your light, | |
| You common people of the skies, | |
| What are you, when the Moon shall rise? | 5 |
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| Ye violets that first appear, | |
| By your pure purple mantles known | |
| Like the proud virgins of the year, | |
| As if the spring were all your own,— | |
| What are you, when the Rose is blown? | 10 |
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| Ye curious chanters of the wood | |
| That warble forth dame Nature’s lays, | |
| Thinking your passions understood | |
| By your weak accents; what’s your praise | |
| When Philomel her voice doth raise? | 15 |
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| So when my Mistress shall be seen | |
| In sweetness of her looks and mind, | |
| By virtue first, then choice, a Queen, | |
| Tell me, if she were not design’d | |
| Th’ eclipse and glory of her kind? | 20 |
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