"_What makes the Vine about the Elm to dance With turnings, windings, and embracements round? What makes the loadstone to the North advance His subtle point, as if from thence he found His chief attractive virtue to redound? Kind Nature, first, doth cause all things to love; Love makes them dance, and in just order move._
"_Hark how the birds do sing! and mark then how, Jump with the modulation of their lays, They lightly leap, and skip from bough to bough; Yet do the cranes deserve a greater praise, Which keep such measure in their airy ways: As when they all in order rankèd are, They make a perfect form triangular._
"_In the chief angle, flies the watchful guide; And all the followers their heads do lay On their foregoers' backs, on either side: But, for the Captain hath no rest to stay His head forwearied with the windy way, He back retires; and then the next behind, As his Lieutenant, leads them through the wind._
"_By why relate I every singular? Since all the world's great fortunes and affairs Forward and backward rapt and whirlèd are, According to the music of the spheres; And Chance herself her nimble feet upbears On a round slippery wheel, that rolleth aye, And turns all states with her impetuous sway._
"_Learn then to dance you, that are princes born And lawful Lords of earthly creatures all; Imitate them, and thereof take no scorn, For this new Art to them is natural. And imitate the stars celestial; For when pale Death your vital twist shall sever, Your better parts must dance with them for ever._"
_Thus LOVE persuades, and all the crowd of men That stands around, doth make a murmuring, As when the wind, loosed from his hollow den, Among the trees a gentle bass doth sing; Or as a brook, through pebbles wandering: But in their looks, they uttered this plain speech,_ "_That they would learn to dance, if LOVE would teach._"
_Then, first of all, he doth demonstrate plain, The motions seven that are in Nature found; Upward and downward, forth and back again, To this side, and to that, and turning round: Whereof a thousand Brawls he doth compound, Which he doth teach unto the multitude; And ever, with a turn they must conclude._
_As when a Nymph arising from the land, Leadeth a dance, with her long watery train, Down to the sea, she wries to every hand, And every way doth cross the fertile plain; But when, at last, she falls into the Main, Then all her traverses concluded are, And with the sea her course is circular._