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Your frown undoes me; your smile is my wealth;
And, as you please to look, I have my health.
Methought Love, pitying me, when he saw this,
Gave me your hands, the backs and palms, to kiss.
That cured me not, but to bear pain gave strength;
And what is lost in force, is took in length.

I called on Love again, who feared you so,
That his compassion still proved greater woe:
For then I dreamed I was in bed with you,
But durst not feel, for fear 't should not be true.
This merits not our 1 anger, had it been;

The Queen of Chastity was naked seen :
And in bed, not to feel, the pain I took,
Was more than for Actaeon not to look.

And that breast which lay ope, I did not know
But for the clearness, from a lump of snow.

ELEGY XIII.

1635.

HIS PARTING FROM HER.

SINCE she must go, and I must mourn, come night, Environ me with darkness, whilst I write :

Shadow that hell unto me, which alone

I am to suffer, when my soul 2 is gone.3

1 your (?). 2 love, 1669. 3 The lines from here to that beginning, "Have we for this," on page 105, occur only in the edition of 1669.

Alas! the darkest magic cannot do it,

And that great hell to boot are shadows to it.
Should Cynthia quit thee, Venus, and each star,
It would not form one thought dark as mine are;
I could lend them obscureness now, and say,
Out of myself, there should be no more day;
Such is already my self-want of sight,

Did not the fire within me force a light.

O Love, that fire and darkness should be mixt,
Or to thy triumphs such strange torments fixt!
Is 't because thou thyself art blind, that we,
Thy martyrs, must no more each other see?
Or tak'st thou pride to break us on thy wheel,
And view old Chaos in the pains we feel?
Or have we left undone some mutual rite,
That thus with parting thou seek'st us to spite?
No, no. The fault is mine, impute it to me,
Or rather to conspiring Destiny;

Which (since I loved) for me before decreed
That I should suffer when I loved indeed,
And therefore, sooner now than I can say
I saw the golden fruit, 't is rapt away;

Or as I had watched one drop in the vast stream,
And I left wealthy only in a dream.

Yet, Love, thou 'rt blinder than thyself in this,
To vex my dove-like friend for my amiss,
And, where one sad truth may expiate
Thy wrath, to make her fortune run my fate.1

1 my fortune ruin her fate (?).

So blinded Justice doth, when favorites fall,

Strike them, their house, their friends, their favorites all. Was 't not enough that thou didst dart thy fires

Into our bloods, inflaming our desires,

And mad'st us sigh and blow, and pant, and burn,

And then thyself into our flames didst turn?
Was 't not enough, that thou didst hazard us

To paths in love so dark and dangerous,

And those so ambushed round with household spies,
And, over all, thy husband's lowering eyes
Inflamed with the ugly sweat of jealousy?
Yet went we not still on in constancy?
Have we for this kept guards, like spy o'er1 spy?
Had correspondence, whilst the foe stood by?
Stolen (more to sweeten them) our many blisses
Of meetings, conference, embracements, kisses ?
Shadowed with negligence our most respects?
Varied our language through all dialects

2

Of becks, winks, looks, and often under boards
Spoke dialogues with our feet far from 3 words?
Have we proved all the secrets of our art,
Yea, thy pale inwards and thy panting heart,
And after all this passed purgátory

Must sad divorce make us the vulgar story? 4
First let our eyes be riveted quite through
Our turning brains, and both our lips grow to;
Let our arms clasp like ivy, and our fear
Freeze us together, that we may stick here;

1 on, 1669. 2 best, ibid. 3 from our, ibid. 4 The lines from here to
"Fortune do thy worst," on page 106, occur only in the edition of 1669.

Till Fortune, that would ruin us with the deed,
Strain his eyes open, and yet make them bleed.
For Love it cannot be, whom hitherto

I have accused, should such a mischief do.
O Fortune, thou 'rt not worth my least exclaim,
And plague enough thou hast in thy own name:
Fortune do thy worst,1 my friend and I have arms,
Though not against thy strokes, against thy harms.
Bend us, in sunder thou canst not divide
Our bodies so, but that our souls are tied,

And we can love by letters still, and gifts,

And thoughts and dreams; Love never wanteth shifts.
I will not look upon the quickening sun,

But straight her beauty to my sense shall run;
The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure;
Waters suggest her clear, and the earth sure;
Time shall not lose our passages; the Spring,
How fresh our love was in the beginning;
The Summer, how it ripened in the year;
And Autumn, what our golden harvests were;
The Winter I'll not think on, to spite thee,
But count it a lost season, so shall she.1

And, dearest friend, since we must part, drown night
With hope of day; burdens well borne are light.
The cold and darkness longer hang somewhere,
Yet Phoebus equally lights all the sphere.
And what we cannot in like portion pay,

The world enjoys in mass, and so we may.

1 Do thy great worst, 1669. 2 Rend, ibid. 3 how it inripenéd, 1639, '49, '54, '69. 4 The verses from here to that beginning, "And this to the comfort," on page 107, occur only in the edition of 1669.

Be then ever yourself, and let no woe

Win on your health, your youth, your beauty: so
Declare yourself base Fortune's enemy,

No less be your contempt than her inconstancy :
That I may grow enamoured on your mind,
When my own thoughts I here neglected find.
And this to th' comfort of my dear I vow,
My deeds shall still be what my deeds are now;
The poles shall move to teach me ere I start,
And when I change my love, I'll change my heart;
Nay, if I wax but cold in my desire,

Think heaven hath motion lost, and the world fire.
Much more I could; but many words have made
That oft suspected which men would1 persuade:
Take therefore all in this; I love so true,
As I will never look for less in you.

ELEGY XIV.

1635.

JULIA.

HARK, news, O Envy, thou shalt hear descried

My Julia; who as yet was ne'er envied.
To vomit gall in slander, swell her veins
With calumny that hell itself disdains,

1 most, 1669.

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