STRODE, William

Keep on your mask, and hide your eye,

Keep on your mask, and hide your eye,

For with beholding you I die:

Your fatal beauty, Gorgon-like,

Dead with astonishment will strike;

Your piercing eyes if them I see

Are worse than basilisks to me.

Shut from mine eyes those hills of snow,

Their melting valleys doe not show;

Their azure paths lead to despair,

O vex me not, forbear, forbear;

For while I thus in torments dwell

The sight of heaven is worse than hell.

Your dainty voice and warbling breath

Sound like a sentence pass'd for death;

Your dangling tresses are become

Like instruments of final doom.

O, if an Angel torture so,

When life is done where shall I go?

Chloris in the Snow

I saw fair Chloris walk alone,

When feather'd rain came softly down,

As Jove descending from his Tower

To court her in a silver shower:

The wanton snow flew to her breast,

Like pretty birds into their nest,

But, overcome with whiteness there,

For grief it thaw'd into a tear:

Thence falling on her garments' hem,

To deck her, froze into a gem.