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For such gifts as no lady could spurn,
Must offer my love in return. 
When I looked on your lion, it brought
All the dangers at once to my thought,
Encountered by all sorts of men,
Before he was lodged in his den—­
>From the poor slave whose club or bare hands
Dug the trap, set the snare on the sands,
With no King and no Court to applaud,
By no shame, should he shrink, overawed, 140
Yet to capture the creature made shift,
That his rude boys might laugh at the gift
—­To the page who last leaped o’er the fence
Of the pit, on no greater pretence
Than to get back the bonnet he dropped,
Lest his pay for a week should be stopped. 
So, wiser I judged it to make
One trial what ‘death for my sake’
Really meant, while the power was yet mine,

Than to wait until time should define 150
Such a phrase not so simply as I,
Who took it to mean just ‘to die.’ 
The blow a glove gives is but weak: 
Does the mark yet discolour my cheek? 
But when the heart suffers a blow,
Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?”

I looked, as away she was sweeping. 
And saw a youth eagerly keeping
As close as he dared to the doorway. 
No doubt that a noble should more weigh 160
His life than befits a plebeian;
And yet, had our brute been Nemean—­
(I judge by a certain calm fervour
The youth stepped with, forward to serve her)
—­He’d have scarce thought you did him the worst turn
If you whispered “Friend, what you’d get, first earn!”
And when, shortly after, she carried
Her shame from the Court, and they married,
To that marriage some happiness, maugre
The voice of the Court, I dared augur. 170

For De Lorge, he made women with men vie,
Those in wonder and praise, these in envy;
And in short stood so plain a head taller. 
That he wooed and won . . . how do you call her? 
The beauty, that rose in the sequel
To the King’s love, who loved her a week well. 
And ’twas noticed he never would honour
De Lorge (who looked daggers upon her)
With the easy commission of stretching
His legs in the service, and fetching 180
His wife, from her chamber, those straying
Sad gloves she was always mislaying,
While the King took the closet to chat in,—­
But of course this adventure came pat in. 
And never the King told the story,
How bringing a glove brought such glory,
But the wife smiled—­“His nerves are grown firmer: 
Mine he brings now and utters no murmur.”

Venienti occurrite morbo! 
With which moral I drop my theorbo. 190