With Essex in Ireland; Being Extracts from a Diary Kept in Ireland During the Year 1599 by Mr. Henry Harvey, Sometime Secretary to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. Being early returned to the house and his Excellency having still no need of my services, and my heart being so full of Mistress Agatha, tied as it seemed with knots to her tender perfections, I hastily took pen and tablet, and sat down to indite a sonnet; an habit which has ever been a solace to me, as to other lovers, alike whether their stars be kind or cruel, though not one to be indulged in beyond the limits of a due discretion. And this sonnet began thus,? Oh strange-hued love! great Nature's joy and ban ! Thou wound, yet unguent of this dolorous earth ! Thou sweetest torment of sad-hearted man ! Thou gentle savage ! thou distressful mirth ! Here all forlorn I sit me down and sing Thy piercing darts, so cruel and so sweet; Whose tender stings such honeyed sorrows bring, Whose bitter joys .... Now I had just reached the middle of this line, and was even debating in my mind what should be a fitting rhyme to the preceding one, when I heard the voice of young Frank Gardner raised without, and another voice with his, seeming to dispute with him,and both coming closer and closer. Dropping my pen, therefore, I ran to the door, but hardly had I reached it before I was met and all but overturned by him and another young lad of his own age, who were coming along, and disputing lustily one with the other. '' How now, Frank ? How now ? " cried I, so soon as I had regained my balance. " Do you take yourself to be in one of your West Country taverns where you may brawl your fill, or of what think you to let your voice be heard in this unseemly fashion in my lord's very antechamber ? Nay, shame, gentlemen ! shame ! shame ! What means this insolence? Down with your hands both of you ! " For he and the other youngster were squaring up to one another, and both had their h...