For while she did this lower world adorn, That she could die, or that she could live here. RICHARD CRASHAW [1613?-1649] THE FLAMING HEART UPON THE BOOK AND PICTURE OF THE SERAPHICAL SAINT TERESA LIVE in these conquering leaves: live all the same; Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms. Let all thy scatter'd shafts of light, that play By all thy dower of lights and fires; By all thy lives and deaths of love; By thy large draughts of intellectual day, By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire; By the full kingdom of that final kiss That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His; By all of Him we have in thee; [From THE FLAMING HEART, etc.] RICHARD LOVELACE [1618-1658] TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind True, a new mistress now I chase, And with a stronger faith embrace Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore I could not love thee, Dear, so much, TO LUCASTA ON GOING BEYOND SEAS IF to be absent were to be Away from thee; Or that when I am gone You or I were alone; Then, my Lucasta, might I crave Pity from blustering wind, or swallowing wave. But I'll not sigh one blast or gale Or pay a tear to 'suage The foaming blue-god's rage; Or no, I'm still as happy as I was. Though seas and land betwixt us both, Our faith and troth, Like separated souls, All time and space controls: Above the highest sphere we meet Unseen, unknown, and greet as Angels greet. So then we do anticipate And are alive i' the skies, If thus our lips and eyes Can speak like spirits unconfined In Heaven, their earthy bodies left behind. TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON WHEN love with unconfinèd wings To whisper at the grates; The birds that wanton in the air When flowing cups run swiftly round Our careless heads with roses crown'd, When thirsty grief in wine we steep, When healths and draughts go free Fishes that tipple in the deep When, like committed linnets, I When I shall voice aloud, how good Stone walls do not a prison make, If I have freedom in my love- HENRY VAUGHAN [1622-1695] THE RETREAT HAPPY those early days, when I Shined in my Angel-infancy! Before I understood this place And in those weaker glories spy Before I taught my tongue to wound But felt through all this fleshly dress O how I long to travel back, DEPARTED FRIENDS THEY are all gone into the world of Light, Their very memory is fair and bright, It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest, I see them walking in an air of glory, Whose light doth trample on my days: My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, Mere glimmerings and decays. |