A lute of senseless wood, by nature dumb,
Touched by thy hand doth speak divinely well;
And from thy lips and breast sweet tunes do come
To my dead heart, the which new life do give.
Of greater wonders heard we never tell
Than for the dumb to speak, the dead to live.
V
_Of the envy others bear to his lady for the former perfections_
When beauty to the world vouchsafes this bliss,
To show the one whose other there is not,
The whitest skins red blushing shame doth blot,
And in the reddest cheeks pale envy is.
The fair and foul come thus alike by this;
For when the sun hath our horizon got,
Venus herself doth shine no more, God wot,
Than the least star that takes the light from his.
The poor in beauty thus content remain
To see their jealous cause revenged in thee,
And their fair foes afflicted with like pain.
Lo, the clear proof of thy divinity;
For unto God is only due this praise
The highest to pluck down, the low to raise!
VI
_To his mistress, upon occasion of a Petrarch he gave her, showing her
the reason why the Italian commenters dissent so much in the exposition
thereof_
Miracle of the world! I never will deny
That former poets praise the beauty of their days;
But all those beauties were but figures of thy praise,
And all those poets did of thee but prophesy.
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