Let foolish lovers, if they will love dung,

With Canvas, not with Arras, clothe their shame :
Let Folly speak in her own native tongue.
True beauty dwells on high: ours is a flame
But borrow'd thence to light us thither.
Beauty and beauteous words should go together.

Yet if you go, I pass not; take your way:
For, Thou art still my God, is all that ye
Perhaps with more embellishment can say.
Go, birds of spring: let winter have his fee ;
Let a bleak paleness chalk the door,
So all within be livelier than before.

THE ROSE.

PRESS me not to take more pleasure
In this world of sugar'd lies,

And to use a larger measure
Than my strict, yet welcome size.

First, there is no pleasure here:
Colour'd griefs indeed there are,
Blushing woes, that look as clear,
As if they could beauty spare.

Or if such deceits there be,

Such delights I mean to say ;
There are no such things to me,

Who have pass'd my right away.

But I will not much oppose
Unto what you now advise :
Only take this gentle Rose,
And therein my answer lies.

What is fairer than a rose ?

What is sweeter? yet it purgeth. Purgings enmity disclose,

Enmity forbearance urgeth.

If then all that worldlings prize
Be contracted to a rose;
Sweetly there indeed it lies,
But it biteth in the close.

So this flower doth judge and sentence
Worldly joys to be a scourge:
For they all produce repentance,
And repentance is a purge.

But I health, not physic choose :
Only though I you oppose,

Say that fairly I refuse,

For my answer is a rose.

DISCIPLINE.

THROW away thy rod,
Throw away thy wrath:
0 my God,

Take the gentle path.

Come ye hither all, whose love

Is

your dove,

And exalts you to the sky:

Here is love, which, having breath Even in death,

After death can never die.

O what sweetness from the bowl
Fills my soul,

Such as is, and makes divine!

Is some star (fled from the sphere)

Melted there,

As we sugar melt in wine?