EnglandsHelicon2 H5v | Verse Miscellanies Online

[H5v]

 deare Ioy, how I doe loue thee? As the birds doe loue the Spring: Or the Bees their carefull King, then in requitecompensation, giving due reward , sweet Virgin loue me 

FINIS. H. C.

¶ The Shepheard Eurymachus to his faire Shep-
heardesse Mirimida. +Printed in Robert Greene, Francescos Fortune: Or the second part of Greenes Neuer too late , (1590), sigs. I2-3. The poem comes at the end of a letter written by Eurymachus, a Thessaian shepherd, to Mirimida, a shepherdess, where ‘he set downe a Sonnet written in the forme of a Madrigale, thus’. Author: Robert Greene. Structure (May/Ringler): 49: 7×7 a10b4a10b4c10d4c10

W Hen  Flora  proud in pompesplendid display                           of all her flowers sate bright and gay: And gloried in the dewe of  Iris  showers, and did display  Her mantle checquer’d all with gaudie greene, Then I alone A mournfull man in  Ericine  was seene. +Venus is given the name Erycina from mount Eryx,                             Greene appears to be confusing the deity with the place name. 

With folded armes I trampled through the grasse,  Tracing as he That held the Throne of Fortune brittle glasse, +the throne of Fortune that is made of brittle, easily                          breakable glass, see  glossary  . And loue to be Like Fortune fleeting, as the restlesse winde Mixed  with mists Whose dampe doth make the clearest eyes grow blinde. 

Thus in a maze, I spied a hideous flame, I cast my sight, And sawe where blithely bathing in the same (20) With great delight