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<--John Lyly

16th-century woodcut of Luna, Goddess of the Moon


From The Woman in the Moone
by John Lyly


Prologus

O Vr Poet slumbring in the Muses laps,
    Hath seene a Woman seated in the Moone,
A point beyond the auncient Theorique :
And as it was so he presents his dreame,
Here in the bounds of fayre Vtopia,
Where louely
Nature being onely Queene,
Bestowes such workmanship on earthly mould
That Heauens themselues enuy her glorious worke.
But all in vaine : for (malice being spent)
They yeeld themselues to follow
Natures doom ;
And fayre
Pandora sits in Cynthias orbe.
This, but the shadow of our Authors dreame,
Argues the substance to be neere at hand :
At whose appearance I most humbly craue,
That in your forehead she may read content.
If many faults escape in her discourse,
Remember all is but a Poets dreame,
The first he had in
Phoebus holy bowre,
But not the last, vnlesse the first displease.

1597





Bond, R. Warwick, M.A. The Complete Works of John Lyly, Vol III.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1902, 1967 repr., p. 241





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Images of London:
London in the time of Henry VII. MS. Roy. 16 F. ii.
London, 1510, the earliest view in print
Map of England from Saxton's Descriptio Angliae, 1579
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