approach.
Bounty forbids to pall our thanks with stay,
Or to defer our favour, after view:
The time of grace is, when the cause is new.

ARE. Lo, here the man, celestial Delia,
Who (like a circle bounded in itself)
Contains as much as man in fulness may.
Lo, here the man; who not of usual earth,
But of that nobler and more precious mould
Which Phoebus' self doth temper, is composed;
And who, though all were wanting to reward,
Yet to himself he would not wanting be:
Thy favours gain is his ambition's most,
And labour's best; who (humble in his height)
Stands fixed silent in thy glorious sight.

CYN. With no less pleasure than we have beheld
This precious crystal work of rarest wit,
Our eye doth read thee, now instiled, our Crites;
Whom learning, virtue, and our favour last,
Exempteth from the gloomy multitude.
With common eye the Supreme should not see:
Henceforth be ours, the more thyself to be.

CRI. Heaven's purest light, whose orb may be eclipsed,
But not thy praise; divinest Cynthia!
How much too narrow for so high a grace,
Thine (save therein) the most unworthy Crites
Doth find himself! for ever shine thy fame;
Thine honours ever, as thy beauties do.
In me they must, my dark world's chiefest lights,
By whose propitious beams my powers are raised
To hope some part of those most lofty points,
Which blessed Arete hath pleased to name,
As marks, to which my endeavour's steps should bend:
Mine, as begun at thee, in thee must end.

THE SECOND MASQUE.

ENTER MERCURY AS A PAGE, INTRODUCING EUCOSMOS, EUPATHES, EUTOLMOS,
AND EUCOLOS.

MER. Sister of Phoebus, to whose bright orb we owe, that we not
complain of his absence; these four brethren (for they are
brethren, and sons of Eutaxia, a lady known, and highly beloved of
your resplendent deity) not able to be absent, when Cynthia held a
solemnity, officiously insinuate themselves into thy presence: for,
as there are four cardinal virtues, upon which the whole frame of
the court doth move, so are these the four cardinal properties,
without which the body of compliment moveth not. With these four
silver javelins, (which they bear in their hands) they support in
princes' courts the state of the presence, as by office they are
obliged: which, though here they may seem superfluous, yet, for
honour's sake, they thus