Intending at some pretty game to play.
They Dian, Cupid, and Fidessa were.
Their wager, beauty, bow, and cruelty;
The conqueress the stakes away did bear.
Whose fortune then was it to win all three?
Fidessa, which doth these as weapons use,
To make the greatest heart her will obey;
And yet the most obedient to refuse
As having power poor lovers to betray.
With these she wounds, she heals, gives life and death;
More power hath none that lives by mortal breath.

LVIII

O beauty, siren! kept with Circe's rod;
The fairest good in seem but foulest ill;
The sweetest plague ordained for man by God,
The pleasing subject of presumptuous will;
Th' alluring object of unstayed eyes;
Friended of all, but unto all a foe;
The dearest thing that any creature buys,
And vainest too, it serves but for a show;
In seem a heaven, and yet from bliss exiling;
Paying for truest service nought but pain;
Young men's undoing, young and old beguiling;
Man's greatest loss though thought his greatest gain!
True, that all this with pain enough I prove;
And yet most true, I will Fidessa love.

LIX

Do I unto a cruel tiger play,
That preys on me as wolf upon the lambs,
Who fear the danger both of night and day
And run for succour to their tender dams?
Yet will I pray, though she be ever cruel,
On bended knee and with submissive heart.
She is the fire and I must be the fuel;
She must inflict and I endure the smart.
She must, she shall be mistress of her will,
And I, poor I, obedient to the same;
As fit to suffer death as she to kill;
As ready to be blamed as she to blame.
And for I am the subject of her ire,
All men shall know thereby my love entire.

LX

O let me sigh, weep, wail, and cry no more;
Or let me sigh, weep, wail, cry more and more!
Yea, let me sigh, weep, wail, cry evermore,
For she doth pity my complaints no more
Than cruel pagan or the savage Moor;
But still doth add unto my torments more,
Which grievous are to me by so much more
As she inflicts them and doth wish them more.
O let thy mercy, merciless, be never more!
So shall sweet death to me be welcome, more
Than is to hungry beasts the grassy moor,
As she that to affliction adds yet more,
Becomes mo