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author's praise, however, is somewhat impaired by the extravagances in certain sonnets where, for instance, he honours a lady whose soul, he says, was "endued in her lifetime with infinite perfections as her divine poems do testify," when she on earth did sing poet-wise angels in heaven prayed for her company, and when she died, her "fair and glittering rays increased the light of heaven;" where again he calls on the Countess of Essex to revenge the death of her first husband, Sir Philip Sidney, upon the Spanish people by murdering them _en masse_ with her eyes, and where he calls the Countess of Shrewsbury "chieftain of Venus's host," and places her crowned in heaven beside the Virgin Mary. Constable's zealous publisher was not far wrong when he claimed that in this poet "conceit first claimed his birthright to enjoy," and since we do not find either in the sonnets to Lady Rich or in those to Lady Arabella any special tone of sincerity that leads us to have confidence in our conjecture, we shall be compelled to leave this puzzle unsolved. DIANA UNTO HER MAJESTY'S SACRED HONOURABLE MAIDS Eternal Twins! that conquer death and time, Perpetual advocates in heaven and earth! Fair, chaste, immaculate, and all divine, Glorious alone, before the first man's birth; Your twofold charities, celestial lights, Bow your sun-rising eyes, planets of joy, Upon these orphan poems; in whose rights Conceit first claimed his birthright to enjoy. If, pitiful, you shun the song of death, Or fear the stain of love's life-dropping blood, O know then, you are pure; and purer faith Shall still keep white the flower, the fruit, and bud. Love moveth all things. You that love, shall move All things in him, and he in you shall love. RICHARD SMITH.[A] [Footnote A: Richard Smith was the publisher of the 1594 edition of the _Diana_.] TO HIS MISTRESS Grace full of grace, though in these verses here My love complains of others than of thee, Yet thee alone I loved, and they by me, Thou yet unknown, only mistaken were. Like him which feels a heat now here now there, Blames now this cause now that, until he see The fire indeed from whence they caused be; Which fire I now do know is you, my dear, Thus diverse loves dispersed in my verse In thee alone for ever I unite, And fully unto thee more to rehe
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