In a loose robe of tinsel forth she came,
Nothing but it betwixt her nakedness
And envious light. The downward-burning flame
Of her rich hair did threaten new access
Of venturous Phaeton to scorch the fields;
And thus to bathing came our poet’s goddess,
Her handmaids bearing all things pleasure yields
To such a service; odours most delighted,
And purest linen which her looks had whited.
Then cast she off her robe and stood upright,
As lightning breaks out of a labouring cloud;
Or as the morning heaven casts off the night;
Or as that heaven cast off itself, and showed
Heaven’s upper light, to which the brightest day
Is but a black and melancholy shroud;
Or as when Venus strived for sovereign sway
Of charmful beauty in young Troy’s desire,
So stood Corinna, vanishing her tire.
A soft enflowered bank embraced the fount;
Of Chloris’ ensigns, an abstracted field,
Where grew melanthy, great in bees’ account,
Amareus, that precious balm doth yield,
Enamelled pansies, used at nuptials still,
Diana’s arrow, Cupid’s crimson shield,
Ope-morn, night-shade, and Venus’s navel,
Solemn violets, hanging head as shamed,
And verdant calaminth, for odour famed;
Sacred nepenthe, purgative of care,
And sovereign rumex, that doth rancour kill,
Sya and hyacinth, that Furies wear,
White and red jessamines, merry, meliphill,
Fair crown-imperial, emperor of flowers,
Immortal amaranth, white aphrodill,
And cup-like twillpants, strewed in Bacchus’ bowers.
These cling about this nature’s naked gem,
To taste her sweets, as bees do swarm on them.
And now she used the fount where Niobe,
Tombed in herself, poured her lost soul in tears
Upon the bosom of this Roman Phoebe;
Who, bathed and odoured, her bright limbs she rears,
And drying her on that disparent round,
Her lute she takes to enamour heavenly ears,
And try if, with her voice’s vital sound,
She could warm life through those cold statues spread,
And cheer the dame that wept when she was dead.
And thus she sung, all naked as she sat,
Laying the happy lute upon her thigh,
Not thinking any near to wonder at
The bliss of her sweet breast’s divinity.
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