On a black Gentlewoman

If shadowes be a Pictures excellence

And make it seem more glorious to the sence:
If stars in brightest day are lost for sight
And seem more glorious in the mask of night.

Why should you think fair creature that you lack
Perfection cause your eyes and haire are black.
Or that your beauty, which so far exceeds
The new-sprung Lillies in their maidenheads,
The rosie colour of your cheeks and lips
Should by that darknesse suffer an ecclipse.
Rich Diamonds are fairer being set
And compassed within a foileof jet.
Nor can it be dame nature should have made
So bright a Sun to shine without a shade.
It seems that nature when she first did fancy
Your rare composure studied Negromancy:
And when to you these guifts she did impart
She used altogether the Black Art.
She framed the Magick circle of your eyes,
And made those hairs the chains wherein she ties
Rebellious hearts, those vaines, which doe appear
Twined in Meanders about every sphear,
Mysterious figures are, and when you list
Your voyce commandeth like an exorcist.
Now if in Magick you have skill so far
Vouchsafe to make me your familiar.
Nor hath kind nature her black art reveald
By outward parts alone, some are conceald.
As by the spring head men may easily know
The nature of the streams that run below.
So your black eyes and haire doe give direction,
That all the rest are of the like complexion.
The rest where all rest lies that blesseth man,
That Indian mine, that streight of Magellan.

The worlds dividing gulph, through which who venters
With hoised sailes and ravishd sences enters
To a new world of blisse. Pardon I pray
If my rude muse presumes for to display
Secrets forbid, or hath her bounds surpast
In praising sweetnesse which she nere did tast:
Starv'd men may talk of meat, and blind men may
(Though hid from light) yet know there is a day.
A rover in the mark his arrow sticks
Sometimes as well as he that shoots at pricks.
And if I might direct my shaft aright,
The black mark would I hit, and not the white.

SOURCE: Parnassus Biceps (London, 1656), 75-76.