Page:Hesperides Vol 1.djvu/195

 But when your own fair print was set Once in a virgin flosculet, Sweet as yourself, and newly blown, To give that life, resigned your own: But so as still the mother's power Lives in the pretty lady-flower.

No news of navies burnt at seas; No noise of late-spawn'd tittyries; No closet plot, or open vent, That frights men with a parliament; No new device or late-found trick To read by the stars the kingdom's sick; No gin to catch the state, or wring The freeborn nostril of the king, We send to you; but here a jolly Verse, crown'd with ivy and with holly, That tells of winter's tales and mirth, That milkmaids make about the hearth, Of Christmas sports, the wassail-bowl, That['s] tost up, after fox-i'-th'-hole; Of blind-man-buff, and of the care That young men have to shoe the mare; Of Twelfth-tide cakes, of peas and beans, Wherewith you make those merry scenes,