Anonymous Olde English

Ye moderne Lawreats famousd for your writ,
VVho for your pregnance may in Delos dwelt,
On your sweete lines eternitie doth sit,
Their browes enobling with applause and lawrell.
Triumph and honor ay inuest your writ,
Ye fett your penns from wing of singing swanne,
VVhen sweetely warbling to her selfe she flotes
Adowne Meander streames, and like to Organ
Imparts into her quils melodious notes.

Ye from the father of delicious phrases,
Borrow such hymns as make your mistresse liue
VVhen time is dead, nay Hermes tunes the praises,
VVhich ye in sonnets to your mistresse giue.

Report throughout our westerne Isle doth ring,
The sweete tun'd accents of your Delian sonnetrie,
VVhich to Apollos violine ye sing,
Oh then your high straines drowne his melodie.

From forth dead sleepe of euerlasting darke,
Fame with her trumps shrill summon hath awakt
The Romayne Naso and the Tuskan Petrarch,
Your spirit-rauishing lines to wonder at.

Oh theame befitting high mus'd Astrophil,
He to your siluerie songs lent sweetest touch,
Your songs the immortall spirit of your quill,
Oh pardon, for my artlesse pen to much
Doth dimme your glories through his infant skill.

Though may J not with you the spoyles deuide
(Ye sacred of-spring of Mnemosyne)
Of endlesse praise which haue your pens atchiu'd,
(Your pens the trumps to immortallitie)
Yet be it leyfull that like maymes I bide
Like brunts and skarres in your loues warfare,
And here though in my home-spun verse of them declare.