The Affectionate Shepherd | Page 6

store of jeat we lacke,?So white comparde to blacke is much condemned.?We doo not praise the swanne because shees white,?But for she doth in musique much delite.
And yet the silver-noted nightingale,?Though she be not so white, is more esteemed;?Sturgion is dun of hew, white is the whale,?Yet for the daintier dish the first is deemed:?What thing is whiter than the milke-bred lilly??That knowes it not for naught, what man so silly?
Yea, what more noysomer unto the smell?Than lillies are? What's sweeter then the sage??Yet for pure white the lilly beares the bell,?Till it be faded through decaying age.?House-doves are white, and oozels blacke-birds bee,?Yet what a difference in the taste we see?
Compare the cow and calfe with ewe and lambe,?Rough hayrie hydes with softest downy fell;?Hecfar and bull with weather and with ramme,?And you shall see how far they doo excell;?White kine with blacke, blacke coney-skins with gray,?Kine nesh and strong, skins deare and cheape alway.
The whitest silver is not alwaies best,?Lead, tynne, and pewter are of base esteeme;?The yellow burnisht gold that comes from th' East,?And West, of late invented, may beseeme?The worlds ritch treasury, or Mydas eye;?The ritch mans god, poore mans felicitie.
Bugle and jeat with snow and alablaster?I will compare; white dammasin with blacke;?Bullas and wheaton plumbs, to a good taster?The ripe red cherries have the sweetest smacke:?When they be greene and young, th' are sowre and naught; But being ripe, with eagernes th' are baught.
Compare the wyld cat to the brownish beaver,?Running for life, with hounds pursued sore,?When huntsmen of her pretious stones bereave her,?Which with her teeth sh' had bitten off before;?Restoratives and costly curious felts?Are made of them, and rich imbroydred belts.
To what use serves a peece of crimbling chalke??The agget stone is white, yet good for nothing:?Fie, fie, I am asham'd to heare thee talke,?Be not so much of thine owne image doating:?So faire Narcissus lost his love and life;?Beautie is often with itselfe at strife.
Right diamonds are of a russet hieu,?The brightsome carbuncles are red to see too;?The saphyre stone is of a watchet blue,?To this thou canst not chuse but soone agree to:?Pearles are not white but gray, rubies are red:?In praise of blacke what can be better sed?
For if we doo consider of each mortall thing?That flyes in welkin, or in water swims,?How everie thing increaseth with the spring,?And how the blacker still the brighter dims:?We cannot chuse, but needs we must confesse,?Sable excels milk-white in more or lesse.
As for example, in the christall cleare?Of a sweete streame, or pleasant running river,?Where thousand formes of fishes will appeare,?Whose names to thee I cannot now deliver;?The blacker still the brighter have disgrac'd,?For pleasant profit and delicious taste.
Salmon and trout are of a ruddie colour,?Whiting and dare is of a milk-white hiew;?Nature by them perhaps is made the fuller,?Little they nowrish, be they old or new:?Carp, loach, tench, eeles, though black and bred in mud, Delight the tooth with taste, and breed good blud.
Innumerable be the kindes, if I could name them,?But I a shepheard and no fisher am:?Little it skils whether I praise or blame them,?I onely meddle with my ew and lamb:?Yet this I say that blacke the better is,?In birds, beasts, frute, stones, flowres, herbs, mettals, fish.
And last of all, in blacke there doth appeare?Such qualities as not in yvorie;?Black cannot blush for shame, looke pale for feare,?Scorning to weare another livorie.?Blacke is the badge of sober modestie,?The wonted weare of ancient gravetie.
The learned sisters sute themselves in blacke,?Learning abandons white and lighter hues;?Pleasure and pride light colours never lacke,?But true religion doth such toyes refuse:?Vertue and gravity are sisters growne,?Since blacke by both, and both by blacke are knowne.
White is the colour of each paltry miller,?White is the ensigne of each common woman;?White is white vertues for blacke vyces piller,?White makes proud fooles inferiour unto no man:?White is the white of body, blacke of minde,?Vertue we seldome in white habit finde.
Oh, then be not so proud because th' art fayre,?Vertue is onely the ritch gift of God:?Let not selfe-pride thy vertues name impayre,?Beate not greene youth with sharpe repentance rod:?A fiend, a monster, a mishapen divel;?Vertues foe, vyces friend, the roote of evill.
Apply thy minde to be a vertuous man;?Avoyd ill company, the spoyle of youth;?To follow vertues lore doo what thou can,?Whereby great profit unto the ensuth:?Reade bookes, hate ignorance, the foe to art,?The damme of errour, envy of the hart.
Serve Jove upon thy knees both day and night,?Adore his name above all things on earth;?So shall thy vowes be gracious in his sight,?So little babes are blessed in their birth:?Thinke on no worldly woe, lament thy sin,?For lesser cease, when greater griefes begin.
Sweare no vaine oathes, heare much, but little say,?Speake ill of no man, tend thine owne affaires;?Bridle thy wrath, thine angrie mood delay,?So shall