Yet, I would not have all yet, Yesternight the Sun went hence, He hath no desire nor sense, O how feeble is man's power, But come, bad chance, And we join to 't our strength, And we teach it art and length, Itself o'er us t' advance. When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st no wind, It cannot be That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st; Let not thy divining heart I can remember yet, that I Something did say, and something did bestow; I heard me say, tell her anon, I bid me send my heart, when I was gone, [lie, When I had ripp'd, and search'd where hearts should It kill'd me again, that I, who still was true In life, in my last will should cozen you. Yet I found something like a heart, It was not good, it was not bad, It was entire to none, and few had part: It seem'd, and therefore for our loss be sad, I meant to send that heart instead of mine, A FEVER. On do not die, for I shall hate All women so, when thou art gone, That thee I shall not celebrate, When I remember thou wast one. But yet thou canst not die, I know; To leave this world behind is death; But when thou from this world wilt go, The whole world vapours in thy breath. Or if, when thou, the world's soul, goest, But corrupt worms, the worthiest men. O wrangling schools, that search what fire Shall burn this world, had none the wit Unto this knowledge to aspire, That this her fever might be it! And yet she cannot waste by this, Nor long endure this torturing wrong, These burning fits but meteors be, Yet 't was of my mind, seizing thee, Of thee one hour, than all else ever. THE LEGACY. WHEN last I dy'd (and, dear, I die AIR AND ANGELS. TWICE or thrice had I lov'd thee, Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing did I see; But since my soul, whose child love is, Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, More subtile than the parent is, Love must not be, but take a body too; And therefore what thou wert, and who, I bid love ask, and now, That it assume thy body, I allow, And fix itself in thy lips, eyes, and brow. Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought, Thy every hair for love to work upon Is much too much, some fitter must be sought; Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear, As is 'twixt air and angel's purity, 'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be. Only our love hath no decay: This no to morrow hath, nor yesterday; Running it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first-last-everlasting day. Two graves must hide thine and my corse: If one might, death were no divorce, Alas! as well as other princes, we, (Who prince enough in one another be) Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears, Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears: But souls where nothing dwells but love; (All other thoughts being inmates) then shall prove This, or a love increased there above, [remove. When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves And then we shall be throughly bless'd: But now no more than all the rest. Here upon Earth we' are kings, and none but we Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be; Who is so safe as we? where none can do Treason to us, except one of us two. True and false fears let us refrain: Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Till my return, repair And recompact my scatter'd body so, When those stars had supremacy. So since this name was cut, When love and grief their exaltation had, No door 'gainst this name's influence shut; 'T will make thee; and thou should'st, till I return, Since I die daily, daily mourn. When thy inconsiderate hand Flings ope this casement, with my trembling name, To look on one, whose wit or land New battery to thy heart may frame, And when thy melted maid, And if this treason go To an overt act, and that thou write again; So in forgetting thou remembrest right, And unaware to me shalt write. But glass and lines must be No means our firm substantial love to keep; Impute this idle talk to that I go, For dying men talk often so. TWICKNAM GARDEN. BLASTED with sighs, and surrounded with tears, The spider love, which transubstantiates all, 'T were wholesomer for me, that winter did These trees to laugh, and mock me to my face; Hither with crystal phjals, lovers, come, And take my tears, which are love's wine, And try your mistress' tears at home, For all are false, that taste not just like mine; Alas! hearts do not in eyes shine, Nor can you more judge woman's thoughts by tears, O perverse sex, where none is true but she, VALEDICTION TO HIS BOOK. I'LL tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us; How I shall stay, though she eloigne me thus, And how posterity shall know it too; How thine may out-endure Sibyl's glory, and obscure Her, who from Pindar could allure, And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find and name. Study our manuscripts, those myriads Of letters, which have past 'twixt thee and me, Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all, whom love's subliming fire invades, Rule and example found; There, the faith of any ground No schismatic will dare to wound, That sees, how love this grace to us affords, To make, to keep, to use, to be, these his records. This book, as long liv'd as the elements, Or as the world's form, this all-graved tomb, We for love's clergy only' are instruments; Vandals and Goths invade us, Learning were safe in this our universe, [verse. Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels Here love's divine (since all divinity Is love or wonder) may find all they seek, Whether abstracted spiritual love they like, Their souls exhal'd with what they do not see; Or loath so to amuse Faith's infirmities, they chuse Something, which they may see and use; For though mind be the Heaven, where love doth Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it. [sit, Here more than in their books may lawyers find, Forsake him, who on them relies, Here statesmen, (or of them they which can read) Who the present govern well, Whose weakness none doth or dares tell ; In this thy book such will there something see, As in the Bible some can find out alchymv. Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I 'll study thee, Sun, or stars, are fitliest view'd At their brightest; but to conclude Of longitudes, what other way have we, But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be? If, as in water stirr'd more circles be And though each spring do add to love new heat, New taxes, and remit them not in peace, COMMUNITY. GOOD we must love, and must hate ill, But there are things indifferent, As we shall find out fancy bent. If then at first wise Nature had Then some we might hate, and some chuse, But since she did them so create, Only this rests, all all may use. If they were good, it would be seen, And to all eyes itself betrays: So they deserve nor blame nor praise. But they are ours, as fruits are ours, And he that leaves all, doth as well; Chang'd loves are but chang'd sorts of meat; And when he hath the kernel eat, Who doth not fling away the shell? LOVE'S GROWTH. I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure Vicissitude and season, as the grass; But if this medicine love, which cures all sorrow And yet no greater, but more eminent, Stars by the Sun are not enlarg'd, but shown. LOVE'S EXCHANGE. Love, any devil else but you Would for a giv'n soul give something too; Give th' art of rhyming, huntmanship, or play, I ask no dispensation now I do not sue from thee to draw A non obstante on Nature's law; Give me thy weakness, make me blind Is love, or that love childish is. Let me not know that others know That she knows my pains, lest that so A tender shame make me mine own new woe. If thou give nothing, yet thou 'rt just, Because I would not thy first motions trust: Small towns which stand stiff, till great shot Enforce them, by war's law condition not; Such in love's warfare is my case, I may not article for grace, Having put Love at last to show this face. This face, by which he could command Can call vow'd men from cloisters, dead from tombs, Deserts with cities, and make more Mines in the earth, than quarries were before. For this Love is enrag'd with me, Yet kills not; if I must example be To future rebels; if th' unborn Must learn, by my being cut up and torn; CONFINED LOVE. SOME man, unworthy to be possessor, Of old or new love, himself being false or weak, Thought his pain and shame would be lesser If on womankind he might his anger wreak, SOME that have deeper digg'd Love's mine than I, And as no chymic yet th' elixir got, So lovers dream a rich and long delight, Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day, Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom's play! 'T is not the bodies marry, but the minds, Which he in her angelic finds, Would swear as justly, that he hears, In that day's rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres. Hope not for mind in women; at their best Sweetness and wit, they 're but mummy possest. THE CURSE. WHOEVER guesses, thinks, or dreams he knows May some dull whore to love dispose, |