University of Virginia Library

Lyke the Phenix

Description and praise of his loue.

Lyke the Phenix a birde most rare in sight
With golde and purple that nature hath drest:
Such she me semes in whom I most delight,
If I might speake for enuy at the least.
Nature I thinke first wrought her in despite,
Of rose and lillye that sommer bringeth first,

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In beauty sure excedyng all the rest,
Vnder the bent of her browes iustly pight:
As polisht Diamondes, or Saphires at the least:
Her glistryng lightes the darkenesse of the night.
Whose little mouth and chinne like all the rest.
Her ruddy lippes excede the corall quite.
Her yuery teeth where none excedes the rest.
Faultlesse she is from fote vnto the waste.
Her body small and straight as mast vpright.
Her armes long in iust proporcion cast,
Her handes depaint with veines all blew and white.
What shall I say for that is not in sight?
The hidden partes I iudge them by the rest.
And if I were the forman of the quest,
To geue a verdite of her beauty bright,
Forgeue me Phebus, thou shouldst be dispossest,
Which doest vsurpe my ladies place of right.
Here will I cease lest enuy cause dispite.
But nature when she wrought so fayre a wight,
In this her worke she surely did entende,
To frame a thing that God could not amende.