A Praise Of His Love

Give place, ye lovers, here before  That spent your boasts and brags in vain;  My lady's beauty passeth more  The best of yours,

I dare well sayn,  Than doth the sun the candle-light,  Or brightest day the darkest night.  And thereto hath a troth as just  As had Penelope the fair;  For what she saith, ye may it trust,  As it by writing sealed were;  And virtues hath she many mo  Than I with pen have skill to show.  I could rehearse, if that I wold,  The whole effect of Nature's plaint,  When she had lost the perfit mould,  The like to whom she could not paint;  With wringing hands, how she did cry,  And what she said,

I know it,

I.  I know she swore with raging mind,  Her kingdom only set apart,  There was no loss by law of kind,  That could have gone so near her heart;  And this was chiefly all her pain;  She could not make the like again.  Sith Nature thus gave her the praise,  To be the chiefest work she wrought;  In faith, methink, some better ways  On your behalf might well be sought,  Than to compare, as ye have done,  To match the candle with the sun.