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.
319. A NEW-YEAR'S GIFT SENT TO SIR SIMON STEWARD.
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,
