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Some darks had been discovered, and the deeds too:
In time he may repent, and make some blush
To see the second part danced on the stage.
My thoughts acquit you for dishonouring me
By any foul act, but the virtuous know

'T is not enough to clear ourselves, but the
Suspicions of our shame.

Aret.

Your lecture?

Born.

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I have done: and howsoever

My language may appear to you, it carries
No other than my fair and just intent

To your delights, without curb to their modest
And noble freedom.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

1552-1618.

The Soul's Errand.

Go, soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless errand!

Fear not to touch the best,
The truth shall be thy warrant;

Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' actions,

Not loved unless they give,

Not strong but by their factions.

If potentates reply,

Give potentates the lie.

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Tell age it daily wasteth,
Tell honour how it alters,

Tell beauty how she blasteth,
Tell favour how she falters.
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness:
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness.

And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie

Tell physic of her boldness,

Tell skill it is pretension,

Tell charity of coldness,
Tell law it is contention.
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness,

Tell nature of decay,

Tell friendship of unkindness,

Tell justice of delay.

And if they will reply,

Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming,

Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming.

If arts and schools reply,

Give arts and schools the lie.

So when thou hast, as I

Commanded thee, done blabbing:

Although to give the lie

Deserves no less than stabbing;
Yet stab at thee who will,

No stab the soul can kill.

Men.

A nightingale,

Nature's best skilled musician, undertakes

The challenge, and for every several strain

The well-shaped youth could touch, she sung her own;

He could not run division with more art

Upon his quaking instrument, than she,

The nightingale, did with her various notes
Reply to: for a voice, and for a sound,
Amethus, 't is much easier to believe

That such they were, than hope to hear again.
Amet. How did the rivals part?

Men.

You term them rightly;

For they were rivals, and their mistress, harmony.
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird

Whom art had never taught clefs, moods, or notes,

Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice:

To end the controversy, in a rapture
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick,

That there was curiosity and cunning,

Concord in discord, lines of differing method

Meeting in one full centre of delight.

Amet. Now for the bird.

Men.

The bird, ordained to be

Music's first martyr, strove to imitate

These several sounds: which, when her warbling throat

Failed in, for grief, down dropped she on his lute,

And brake her heart! It was the quaintest sadness,

1

To see the conqueror upon her hearse,

Tc weep a funeral elegy of tears:

That, trust me, my Amethus, I could chide

Mine own unmanly weakness, that made me
A fellow-mourner with him.

Amet.

I believe thee.

Men. He looked upon the trophies of his art,

Then sighed, then wiped his eyes, then sighed and cried:
'Alas, poor creature! I will soon revenge
This cruelty upon the author of it:
Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,
Shall never more betray a harmless peace
To an untimely end:' and in that sorrow,
As he was pashing it against a tree,

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Passed but just now by your next neighbour's house,

Where, as they say, dwells one young Lionel,
An unthrift youth; his father now at sea:
And there, this night was held a sumptuous feast.
In the height of their carousing, all their brains
Warmed with the heat of wine, discourse was offered
Of ships and storms at sea: when suddenly,

Out of his giddy wildness, one conceives

The room wherein they quaffed to be a pinnace

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