Methinks I court, methinks I kiss,
        Methinks I now embrace my mistress. 
        O blessed days, O sweet content,
        In Paradise my time is spent. 
        Such thoughts may still my fancy move,
        So may I ever be in love. 
          All my joys to this are folly,
          Naught so sweet as melancholy. 
        When I recount love’s many frights,
        My sighs and tears, my waking nights,
        My jealous fits; O mine hard fate
        I now repent, but ’tis too late. 
        No torment is so bad as love,
        So bitter to my soul can prove. 
          All my griefs to this are jolly,
          Naught so harsh as melancholy. 
        Friends and companions get you gone,
        ’Tis my desire to be alone;
        Ne’er well but when my thoughts and I
        Do domineer in privacy. 
        No Gem, no treasure like to this,
        ’Tis my delight, my crown, my bliss. 
          All my joys to this are folly,
          Naught so sweet as melancholy. 
        ’Tis my sole plague to be alone,
        I am a beast, a monster grown,
        I will no light nor company,
        I find it now my misery. 
        The scene is turn’d, my joys are gone,
        Fear, discontent, and sorrows come. 
          All my griefs to this are jolly,
          Naught so fierce as melancholy. 
        I’ll not change life with any king,
        I ravisht am:  can the world bring
        More joy, than still to laugh and smile,
        In pleasant toys time to beguile? 
        Do not, O do not trouble me,
        So sweet content I feel and see. 
          All my joys to this are folly,
          None so divine as melancholy. 
        I’ll change my state with any wretch,
        Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch;
        My pain’s past cure, another hell,
        I may not in this torment dwell! 
        Now desperate I hate my life,
        Lend me a halter or a knife;
          All my griefs to this are jolly,
          Naught so damn’d as melancholy.

DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO THE READER.

Gentle reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world’s view, arrogating another man’s name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as [7]he said, Primum si noluero, non respondebo, quis coacturus est?  I am a free man born, and may choose whether I will tell; who can compel me?  If I be urged, I will as readily reply as that Egyptian in [8]Plutarch, when a curious fellow would needs know what he had in his basket, Quum vides velatam, quid inquiris in rem absconditam?  It was therefore covered, because he should not know what was in it.  Seek not after that which is