A PRAISE OF HIS LADY
by: John Heywood? (1497-1580)
- IVE place,
you ladies, and begone!
- Boast not yourselves at all!
- For here at hand approacheth one
- Whose face will stain you all.
-
- The virtue of her lively looks
- Excels the precious stone;
- I wish to have none other books
- To read or look upon.
-
- In each of her two crystal eyes
- Smileth a naked boy;
- It would you all in heart suffice
- To see that lamp of joy.
-
- I think Nature hath lost the mould
- Where she her shape did take;
- Or else I doubt if Nature could
- So fair a creature make.
-
- She may be well compared
- Unto the Phoenix
kind,
- Whose like was never seen or heard,
- That any man can find.
-
- In life she is Diana chaste,
- In troth Penelopey;
- In word and eke in deed steadfast.
- --What will you more we say?
-
- If all the world were sought so far,
- Who could find such a wight?
- Her beauty twinkleth like a star
- Within the frosty night.
-
- Her rosial colour comes and goes
- With such a comely grace,
- More ruddier, too, than doth the rose,
- Within her lively face.
-
- At Bacchus' feast none shall her meet,
- Ne at no wanton play,
- Nor gazing in an open street,
- Nor gadding as a stray.
-
- The modest mirth that she doth use
- Is mix'd with shamefastness;
- All vice she doth wholly refuse,
- And hateth idleness.
-
- O Lord! it is a world to see
- How virtue can repair,
- And deck in her such honesty,
- Whom Nature made so fair.
-
- Truly she doth so far exceed
- Our women nowadays,
- As doth the jeliflower a weed;
- And more a thousand ways.
-
- How might I do to get a graff
- Of this unspotted tree?
- --For all the rest are plain but chaff,
- Which seem good corn to be.
-
- This gift alone I shall her give;
- When death doth what he can,
- Her honest fame shall ever live
- Within the mouth of man.
"A Praise of his Lady"
was originally published in Tottel's Miscellany, 1557.
Although the authorship of this poem is uncertain, it is often
attributed to John Heywood. |
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POEMS BY JOHN HEYWOOD |
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