Poesias
Poesias To every place at once, and nowhere fixed,
The mind and sight distractedly commixed.
Her hair, nor loose nor tied in formal plait,
Proclaimed in her a careless hand of pride;
For some, untucked, descended her sheaved hat,
Hanging her pale and pinèd cheek beside.
Some in her threaden fillet still did bide,
And, true to bondage, would not break from thence,
Though slackly braided in loose negligence.
A thousand favours from a maund she drew
Of amber, crystal, and of beaded jet,
Which one by one she in a river threw
Upon whose weeping margin she was set;
Like usury applying wet to wet,
Or monarch’s hands that lets not bounty fall
Where want cries some, but where excess begs all.
Of folded schedules had she many a one
Which she perused, sighed, tore, and gave the flood;
Cracked many a ring of posied gold and bone,
Bidding them find their sepulchres in mud;
Found yet more letters sadly penned in blood,
With sleided silk feat and affectedly
Enswathed and sealed to curious secrecy.
These often bathed she in her fluxive eyes,
And often kissed, and often ’gan to tear;
Cried ‘O false blood, thou register of lies,