Then he [John Suckling] also was quite a scholar and was interested in the same things we are in poetics so he did a little imitation of (Ben) Jonson’s poem on page two-sixty, the “Oh so white…” – remember that one that we went over so much. – from “The Triumph of Charis?
“Have you seen but a bright lily grow/Before rude hands have touched it/Have you marked but the fall of snow/Before the soil hath smutched it?/Have you felt the wool of beaver,/Or swan’s down ever?/Or have smelt o’ the bud o’ the brier,/Or the nard in the fire?/Or have tasted the bag of the bee?/O so white, O so soft, O so sweet is he” – she! – he
“A Song (to A Lute)” by Sir John Suckling. – “Hast thou seen the down in the air,/ When wanton blasts have tossed it?/Or the ship on the sea/When ruder winds have crossed it?/. Hast thou mark’d the crocodile’s weeping./Or the fox’s sleeping?/Or hast thou viewed the peacock in his pride,/Or the dove by his bride…./ O so fickle, O so vain, O so false, so false is she!”
[Audio for the above can be heard here, , beginning at approximately seventeen-and-three-quarter minutes in and concluding at approximately nineteen-and-a-quarter minutes in]