To the most excellent Princess the Lady Elizabeth, on my friend's dedication of Electra. 

Great Madam,

                          All the Muses humbly bow,

And kneel (not to the ordinance) but you :

And mine stoops low, as Persians to the sky,

Low as their arrogance is bold and high

Who have enacted, that the hat and knee

The hinge of honour be forgot to thee.

Now though you are depos’d in those poor parts,

You’re still the same great princess in our hearts.

Souls make your train and court, which is no less

Now than when all your palace was a press.

State, pomp, obsequious throngs, and such gay things

Are complements, and make but tapestry Kings.

Spare scepters, crowns, nay blood, still there remains

The Princess, not so by the father’s veins

Alone, but virtues, which are such they’ll woo

You realms and subjects wheresoever you go.

You own a word, a look, a touch will smooth,

Unfiled Indians to obedient love.

See foreign princes crowd, and press to lay

Their kingdoms by thy side, and next age may,

See the score of thy royal parents' wrongs,

Reveng’d by Kings which now sleep in thy loins.

You and the Duke are all our hold and fort,

Henry presents the camp, and you the court.

The royal widow with her beauteous sky

Of lady’s, are seen in your cheek and eye :

And in great Gloucester's little self alone,

The father breaths, and brother is at home.

Then leave us not, dear pair, least that we throw

Ourselves down where dead plumbets use to go.

It is your innocence does countermand

Destruction, and bids fire and brimstone, stand,

And when the rowling mountains would come on,

You like those little seeds bid them, begone.

On the account too that it is your ray,

Madam, alone, keeps green up in the bay ;

The poet here presents Electra’s eye

A cristal for to dress your cypress by,

To set your veil, and sighs, and what you wear

Instead of pearl, each oriental tear.

And while you sit in those shades of your dress,

And gloom of your attire, a tragic verse,

Moving with pensive gate, and reverend feet,

May to your eye a smooth admittance meet :

If that it pass the guard, and die not there,

For foreign spy, or Charles’ messenger.

H. P.