Not to know vice at all, and keep true state,
Is virtue and not fate:
Next to that virtue, is to know vice well,
And her black spite expel.
...
Some act of
Love's
bound to reherse,
I thought to bind him, in my verse:
...
Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
So court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you.
...
The owl is abroad,the bat and the toad,
And so is the cat-a mountain,
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
And frog peeps out o'the fountain;
...
Wouldst thou hear what man can say
In a little? Reader, stay.
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
...
Good, and great God, can I not think of thee,
But it must, straight, my melancholy bee?
Is it interpreted in mee disease,
...
Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
...
See the chariot at hand here of Love,
Wherein my lady rideth!
Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
And well the car Love guideth.
...
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name,
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
...
It will be looked for, book, when some but see
Thy title,
Epigrams
, and named of me,
...