nish 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 li