Daughter

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1. Let all the dukes and all the devils roar,
2. He is at liberty! I have ventur’d for him,
3. And out I have brought him to a little wood
4. A mile hence. I have sent him where a cedar,
5. Higher than all the rest, spreads like a plane
6. Fast by a brook, and there he shall keep close
7. Till I provide him files and food, for yet
8. His iron bracelets are not off. O Love,
9. What a stout-hearted child thou art! My father
10. Durst better have endur’d cold iron than done it.
11. I love him beyond love and beyond reason,
12. Or wit, or safety. I have made him know it.
13. I care not, I am desperate. If the law
14. Find me, and then condemn me for’t, some wenches,
15. Some honest-hearted maids, will sing my dirge,
16. And tell to memory my death was noble,
17. Dying almost a martyr. That way he takes
18. I purpose is my way too. Sure he cannot
19. Be so unmanly as to leave me here.
20. If he do, maids will not so easily
21. Trust men again. And yet he has not thank’d me
22. For what I have done; no, not so much as kiss’d me;
23. And that, methinks, is not so well; nor scarcely
24. Could I persuade him to become a freeman,
25. He made such scruples of the wrong he did
26. To me and to my father. Yet I hope,
27. When he considers more, this love of mine
28. Will take more root within him. Let him do
29. What he will with me, so he use me kindly,
30. For use me so he shall, or I’ll proclaim him,
31. And to his face, no man. I’ll presently
32. Provide him necessaries, and pack my clothes up,
33. And where there is a path of ground I’ll venture,
34. So he be with me. By him, like a shadow,
35. I’ll ever dwell. Within this hour the whoobub
36. Will be all o’er the prison. I am then
37. Kissing the man they look for. Farewell, father;
38. Get many more such prisoners and such daughters,
39. And shortly you may keep yourself. Now to him!