Then first Desire began to scale,
And shrouded him under his targe;
As one the worthiest of them all,
And aptest for to geve the charge.
Then pushed souldiers with their pikes,
And halberdes with handy strokes;
The argabushe in fleshe it lightes,
And duns the ayre with misty smokes.
And, as it is the souldiers use
When shot and powder gins to want,
I hanged up my flagge of truce,
And pleaded up for my livès grant.
When Fancy thus had made her breche,
And Beauty entred with her band,
With bag and baggage, sely wretch,
I yelded into Beauties hand.
Then Beautie bad to blow retrete,
And every souldier to retire,
And mercy wyll'd with spede to fet
Me captive bound as prisoner.
Madame, quoth I, sith that this day
Hath served you at all assayes,
I yeld to you without delay
Here of the fortresse all the kayes.
And sith that I have ben the marke,
At whom you shot at with your eye;
Nedes must you with your handy warke,
Or salve my sore, or let me die.
***Since the foregoing song was first printed off, reasons have occurred, which
incline me to believe that Lord Vaux the poet was not the Lord Nicholas Vaux, who
died in 1523, but rather a successor of his in the title. For in the first place it is
remarkable that all the old writers mention Lord Vaux, the poet, as contemporary or
rather posterior to Sir Thomas Wyat and the Earl of Surrey, neither of which made
any figure till long after the death of the first Lord Nicholas Vaux. Thus Puttenham, in
hisArt of English Poesie, 1589, in p. 48, haying named Skelton, adds, "In the latter
end of the same kings raigne [Henry VIII.] sprong up a new company of courtly
makers [poets], of whom Sir Thomas Wyat the elder, and Henry Earl of Surrey, were
the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweet and
stately measures and stile of the Italian poesie... greatly polished our rude and
homely manner of vulgar poesie.. .In the same time, or not long afterwas the Lord
Nicholas Vaux, a man of much facilitie in vulgar makings.[1]"-- Webbe in his
Discourse of English Poetrie,1586, ranges them in the following order,--"The Earl of
Surrey, the Lord Vaux, Norton, Bristow." And Gascoigne, in the place quoted in this
work (b. ii. No. 2.) mentions Lord Vaux after Surrey. Again, the style and measure of
Lord Vaux's pieces seem too refined and polished for the reign of Henry VII. and
rather resemble the smoothness and harmony of Surrey and Wyat, than the rude metre
of Skelton and Hawes; but what puts the matter out of all doubt, in the British