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And neere, in earth doe make your dwelling place,
You birdes, that in the skie
With hastie wing doe flie,
You fishes, that the christall streames imbrace,
For my braue deede
Come shew your selues content in ioies agreed.
You shadowed treene,
An ease of sweete delight,
And fence from Titans burning heate:
Faire meades and greene,
And waters sweete and bright,
This forrest that with liquours weate:
Greene Iuies seate,
That liuest still, and dy’st not in thy kinde,
And wind’st about the tree,
That still vpholdeth thee:
For this braue deed,
Come shew your selues content in ioies agreed.
Apollo being in this ioyfull moode,
Behold where comes a fine and tender Nymph,
And fairer then Aurora in her prime,
Laden with spoiles, she got by hunting late,
A Nymph endow’d with vertues high and rare.
The father oft vnto his Daphne saide
(For so they say this fairest Nymph was call’d,
And Pene was her aged fathers name)
Daughter, to me thou ow’st a sonne in lawe.
Daughter, to me some nephewes thou dost owe.
But with a teint, like the Vermillion Rose,
Bespred vpon her face as white as snowe,
To see her father would haue wedded her,
The chastest virgine with her tender armes
All Lilly white about the louing necke
Of her deere father sweetely then did hang:
Requesting him, that he would giue her leaue,
To leade her life in spotlesse chastitie,
And liue therein, as she had liu’d before.
Her louing father graunted her request.
But yet before, to hinder her intent,
With graue aduise vnto her he did tell,
How heate of youth, and wealth, and beauties lure,
Were contrarie vnto the chastest minde.
And how that each of them alone is able
To worke the tender hart like melted wax.
How much more easie then, when all in one
Were found, as in faire Daphne they did raigne.
Yet though she did excell in all these giftes,
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