Employment (I)

     If as a flower does spread and die,

     You would extend me to some good,

Before I were by frosts extremity

                    Nipt in the bud;

     The sweetness and the praise were thine;

     But the extension and the room,

Which in your garland I should fill, were mine

                    At your great doom.

     For as you do impart your grace,

     The greater shall our glory be.

The measure of our joys is in this place,

                    The stuff with thee.

     Let me not languish then, and spend

     A life as barren to your praise,

As is the dust, to which all life does tend,

                    But with delays.

     All things are busy; only I

     Neither bring honey with the bees,

Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry

                    To water these.

     I am no link of your great chain,

     But all my company is a weed.

Lord place me in your consort; give one strain

                    To my poor reed.