To the Queen's most excellent Majesty.

That which their zeal, whose only zeal was bent

To show the best they could that might delight

Your royal mind, did lately represent,

Renowned empress, to your princely sight

Is now the offering of their humbleness,

Here consecrated to your glorious name,

Whose happy presence did vouchsafe to bless

So poor presentments and to grace the same.

And though it be in the humblest rank of words,

And in the lowest region of our speech,

Yet is it in that kind as best accords

With rural passions, which use not to reach

Beyond the groves and woods where they were bred

And best become a claustral exercise,

Where men shut out, retired and sequestered

From public fashion, seem to sympathize

With innocent and plain simplicity,

And living here under the awful hand

Of discipline and strict observancy,

Learn but our weaknesses to understand,

And therefore, dare not enterprise to show

In louder style the hidden mysteries,

And arts of thrones, which none that are below

The sphere of action and the exercise

Of power can truly show : though men may strain

Conceit above the pitch where it should stand,

And form more monstrous figures then* contain*

A possibility and go beyond

The nature of those managements so far

As oft their common decency they mar.

Whereby the populace, in whom such skill

Is needless, may be brought to apprehend

Notions that may turn all to a taste of ill

Whatever power shall do, or might intend,

And think all cunning, all proceeding one,

And nothing simple and sincerely done.

Yet the eye of practice, looking down from hie

Upon such overreaching vanity ,

Sees how from error to error it doth slot,

As from an unknown ocean into a gulf,

And how though the wolf would counterfeit the goat,

Yet every chink bewrays* him for a wolf.

And therefore, in the view of state to have showed

A counterfeit of state, had been to light

A candle to the sun and so bestowed

Our pains to bring our dimness unto light.

For majesty and power can nothing see

Without itself, that can sight-worthy be.

And therefore, durst not we but on the ground,

From whence our humble argument hath birth

Erect our scene and thereon are we found,

And if we fall, we fall but on the earth,

From whence we plucked the flowers that here we bring,

Which, if at their first opening they did please,

It was enough, they serve but for a spring;

The first sent is the best in things as these.

A music of this nature on this ground

Is ever wont to vanish with the sound.

But yet your royal goodness may raise new

Grace, but the Muses, they will honour you.

Chi non fa, non falla.