Come on, come on; you are pictures out of doors, Bells in your parlors, wild-cats in your kitchens, Saints in your injuries, devils being offended, Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.

Nay, it is true, or else I am a Turk: You rise to play and go to bed to work.

What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me?

O gentle lady, do not put me to’t; For I am nothing, if not critical.

I am not merry; but I do beguile The thing I am, by seeming otherwise. Come, how wouldst thou praise me?

I am about it; but indeed my invention Comes from my pate as birdlime does from frize; It plucks out brains and all: but my Muse labours, And thus she is deliver’d. If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit, The one’s for use, the other useth it.

If she be black, and thereto have a wit, She’ll find a white that shall her blackness fit.

She never yet was foolish that was fair; For even her folly help’d her to an heir.

There’s none so foul and foolish thereunto, But does foul pranks which fair and wise ones do.

She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will and yet was never loud, Never lack’d gold and yet went never gay, Fled from her wish and yet said “Now I may,” She that being anger’d, her revenge being nigh, Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly, She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod’s head for the salmon’s tail; She that could think and ne’er disclose her mind, See suitors following and not look behind, She was a wight, if ever such wight were⁠—

It gives me wonder great as my content To see you here before me. O my soul’s joy! If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have waken’d death! And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas Olympus-high and duck again as low As hell’s from heaven! If it were now to die, ’Twere now to be most happy; for, I fear, My soul hath her content so absolute That not another comfort like to this Succeeds in unknown fate.