Page:Compromises (Repplier).djvu/174

 158 watched the stars of heaven grow dim before his lady's brightness; or when Vauquelin de la Fresnaye saw Philis sleeping on a bed of lilies, regardless of discomfort, and surrounded by infant Loves.

With just such sweet absurdities, such pardonable insincerities, the poets of Elizabeth's England fill their amorous verse. George Gascoigne "swims in heaven" if his mistress smiles upon him; John Lyly unhesitatingly asserts that Daphne's voice "tunes all the spheres;" and Lodge exhausts the resources of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms in searching for comparisons by which to set forth the beauties