I MUST HAVE WANTON POETS
by: Christopher Marlowe
(1564-1593)
- MUST have
wanton poets, pleasant wits,
- Musicians, that with touching of a string
- May draw the pliant king which way I please:
- Music and poetry is his delight;
- Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night,
- Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows;
- And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,
- Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;
- My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
- Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay;
- Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape,
- With hair that gilds the water as it glides,
- Crownets of pearl about his naked arms,
- And in his sportful hands an olive-tree,
- To hide those parts which men delight to see,
- Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, hard by,
- One like Actæon, peeping through the grove,
- Shall by the angry goddess be transform'd,
- And running in the likeness of an hart,
- By yelping hounds pull'd down, shall seem to die:
- Such things as these best please his majesty.
"I must have wanton poets"
is reprinted from Edward the Second. Christopher Marlowe.
New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1894. |
MORE POEMS BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE |
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