owne story
In its true colours and full native glory;
Which when perhaps she shal be heard to tell,
Buffoones and theeves, ceasing to do ill,
Shal blush into a virgin-innocence,
And then woo others from the same offence;
The robber and the murderer, in 'spite
Of his red spots, shal startle into white:
All good (rewards layd by) shal stil increase
For love of her, and villany decease;<46.5>
Naught<46.6> be ignote, not so much out of feare
Of being punisht, as offending her.

So that, when as my future daring bayes
Shall bow it selfe<46.7> in lawrels to her praise,
To crown her conqu'ring goodnes, and proclaime
The due renowne and glories of her name:
My wit shal be so wretched and so poore
That, 'stead of praysing, I shal scandal her,
And leave, when with my purest art I'v done,
Scarce the designe of what she is begunne:
Yet men shal send me home, admir'd, exact;
Proud, that I could from her so wel detract.

Where, then, thou bold instinct, shal I begin
My endlesse taske? To thanke her were a sin
Great as not speake, and not to speake, a blame
Beyond what's worst, such as doth want a name;
So thou my all, poore gratitude, ev'n thou
In this wilt an unthankful office do:
Or wilt I fling all at her feet I have:
My life, my love, my very soule, a slave?
Tye my free spirit onely unto her,
And yeeld up my affection prisoner?
Fond thought, in this thou teachest me to give
What first was hers, since by her breath I live;
And hast but show'd me, how I may resigne
Possession of those thing are none of mine.

<46.1> i.e. Anne, Lady Lovelace, the poet's kinswoman, who seems
to have assisted him in some emergency, unknown to us except
through the present lines.

<46.2> Caractacus(?).

<46.3> The mythology of Greece assigned to each wind a separate
cave, in which it was supposed to await the commands of its
sovereign Aeolus, or Aeolos. It is to this myth that Lovelace
alludes.

<46.4> A very common form of VILE among early writers.

<46.5> This reads like a parody on the fourth Eclogue of Virgil.
The early English poets were rather partial to the introduction
of miniature-pictures of the Golden Age on similar occasions
to the present. Thus Carew, in his poem TO SAXHAM, says:--

"The Pheasant, Partridge, and the Lark
Flew to thy house, as to the Ark.
The willing Oxe of himself came
Home to the slaughter with the Lamb.
And every beast did thither bring
Himself, to be an offeri