form and beauty of her mind

I am posting this poem in the very fervent and slightly desperate hope that it will make me get work done, a task at which I have been failing miserably for quite some time. It is not that I do not want to work, it is just that I am very easily distracted, and have also been sort of generally down and deeply lacking in motivation. Maybe this will help. I am going to resign myself to being slightly nocturnal, and try to work during whatever functional hours my body gives me for the next few days.

You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light;
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the sun shall rise?

You curious chanters of the wood,
That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your voices understood
By your weak accents; what's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own;
What are you when the rose is blown?

So, when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a queen,
Tell me, if she were not design'd
Th' eclipse and glory of her kind?

~Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), 'You Meaner Beauties...' to his mistress, the Queen of Bohemia, 1619, first published 1624. To Elizabeth of Bohemia, about whom I must now write.