or parting place has been.

_Gyges' ring_, which made the wearer invisible.

738. TO WOMEN, TO HIDE THEIR TEETH IF THEY BE ROTTEN OR RUSTY.

Close keep your lips, if that you mean
To be accounted inside clean:
For if you cleave them we shall see
There in your teeth much leprosy.

739. IN PRAISE OF WOMEN.

O Jupiter, should I speak ill
Of woman-kind, first die I will;
Since that I know, 'mong all the rest
Of creatures, woman is the best.

740. THE APRON OF FLOWERS.

To gather flowers Sappha went,
And homeward she did bring
Within her lawny continent
The treasure of the spring.

She smiling blush'd, and blushing smil'd,
And sweetly blushing thus,
She look'd as she'd been got with child
By young Favonius.

Her apron gave, as she did pass,
An odour more divine,
More pleasing, too, than ever was
The lap of Proserpine.

_Continent_, anything that holds, here the bosom of her dress.

741. THE CANDOUR OF JULIA'S TEETH.

White as Zenobia's teeth, the which the girls
Of Rome did wear for their most precious pearls.

_Zenobia_, Queen of Palmyra, conquered by the Romans, A.D. 273.

742. UPON HER WEEPING.

She wept upon her cheeks, and weeping so,
She seem'd to quench love's fire that there did glow.

743. ANOTHER UPON HER WEEPING.

She by the river sat, and sitting there,
She wept, and made it deeper by a tear.

744. DELAY.

Break off delay, since we but read of one
That ever prospered by cunctation.

_Cunctation_, delay: the word is suggested by the name of Fabius
Cunctator, the conqueror of the Carthaginians, addressed by Virg.
(AEn. vi. 846) as "Unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem".

745. TO SIR JOHN BERKLEY, GOVERNOR OF EXETER.

Stand forth, brave man, since fate has made thee here
The Hector over aged Exeter,
Who for a long, sad time has weeping stood
Like a poor lady lost in widowhood,
But fears not now to see her safety sold,
As other towns and cities were, for gold
By those ignoble births which shame the stem
That gave progermination unto them:
Whose restless ghosts shall hear their children sing,
"Our sires betrayed their country and their king".
True, if this city seven times rounded was
With rock, and seven times circumflank'd with brass,
Yet if thou wert not, Berkley, loyal