ALTHOUGH thy hand and faith and good works 1 too
Have sealed thy love, which nothing should undo,
Yea, though thou fall back, that apostasy
Confirm 2 thy love, yet much, much I fear thee.
Women are like the arts, forced unto none,
Open to all searchers, unprized if unknown.
If I have caught a bird and let him fly,
Another fowler, using these 3 means as I,
May catch the same bird; and, as these things be,
Women are made for men, not him, nor me.
Foxes and goats, all beasts change when they please,
Shall women, more hot, wily, wild, than these,
Be bound to one man? and did 5 nature then
Idly make them apter to endure than men ?
They are our clogs, not their own; if a man be
Chained to a galley, yet the galley is free.
Who hath a plough-land, casts all his seed-corn there,
And yet allows his ground more corn should bear ;
Though Danuby into the sea must flow,
The sea receives the Rhene, Volga, and Po.
By nature, which gave it, this liberty
Thou lov'st, but oh! can'st thou love it and me?
1 word, 1669. 2 confirms, ibid. 3 those, 1649, '54, '69.
4 Foxes, goats and all beasts, 1669. 5 bid, ibid.
Likeness glues love; and if that thou so do,
To make us like and love must I change too?
More than thy hate, I hate it; rather let me
Allow her change, than change as oft as she,
And so not teach, but force my opiniön
To love not any one, nor every one.
To live in one land is captivity,
To run all countries a wild roguery;
Waters stink soon, if in one place they bide,1
And in the vast sea are more putrefied,2
But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this
Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,
Then are they purest. Change is the nursery
Of music, joy, life, and eternity.
ONCE, and but once, found in thy company,
All thy supposed escapes are laid on me;
And as a thief at bar is questioned there
By all the men that have been robbed that year,
So am I (by this traitorous means surprised)
By thy hydroptic father catechized.3
Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a cockatrice;
1 abide, 1669. 2 purified, 1649, '54. worse purified, 1669. 3 The following two lines are not in the edition of 1633.
Though he hath oft sworn that he would remove
Thy beauty's beauty and food of our love,
Hope of his goods, if I with thee were seen,
Yet close and secret as our souls we have been.
Though thy immortal mother, which doth lie
Still buried in her bed, yet will not die,
Takes this advantage to sleep out daylight,
And watch thy entries and returns all night,
And when she takes thy hand and would seem kind,
Doth search what rings and armlets she can find,
And, kissing, notes the colour of thy face,
And, fearing lest thou art swoln, doth thee embrace,
To try if thou long,2 doth name strange meats,
And notes thy paleness, blushing, sighs, and sweats,
And politicly will to thee confess
The sins of her own youth's rank lustiness,
Yet Love these sorceries did remove, and move
Thee to gull thine own mother for my love.
Thy little brethren, which like fairy sprites
Oft skipped into our chamber those sweet nights,
And, kissed, and ingled on thy father's knee,
Were bribed next day to tell what they did see;
The grim eight-foot-high iron-bound serving-man,
That oft names God in oaths, and only than,
He that to bar the first gate doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride,
Which, if in hell no other pains there were,
Makes me fear hell, because he must be there,
1 And to try. 2 To try if thou [do] long. J. R. L.
3 blushes, 1669. 4 dandled, ibid.
Though by thy father he were hired to this,
Could never witness any touch or kiss.
But, oh! too common ill, I brought with me
That which betrayed me to my1
enemy,
A loud perfume, which at my entrance cried
Even at thy father's nose, so were we spied.
When like a tyran king, that in his bed
Smelt 2 gunpowder, the pale wretch shivered,
Had it been some bad smell, he would have thought That his own feet or breath that 3 smell had wrought, But as we, in our isle imprisoned,
Where cattle only and divers dogs are bred,
The precious unicorns strange monsters call,
So thought he good strange, that had none at all.
I taught my silks their whistling to forbear,
Even my oppressed shoes dumb and speechless were,
Only, thou bitter sweet, whom I had laid
Next me, me traitorously hast betrayed,
And, unsuspected, hast invisibly
At once fled unto him, and stayed with me.
Base excrement of earth, which dost confound
Sense from distinguishing the sick from sound,
By thee the silly amorous sucks his death
By drawing in a leprous harlot's breath,
By thee the greatest stain to man's estate
Falls on us, to be called effeminate.
Though you be much loved in the Prince's hall,
There things that seem exceed substantial.
1 mine. 2 Smells, 1669. 3 the, ibid.
Gods, when
ye fumed on altars, were pleased well,
Because you were burnt, not that they liked your smell.
You are loathsome all, being taken simply alone;
Shall we love ill things joined, and hate each one?
If you were good, your good doth soon decay;
And you are rare, that takes the good away.
All my perfumes I give most willingly
To embalm thy father's corse; What? will he die?
HERE take my picture; though I bid farewell,
Thine in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell;
'T is like me now, but, I dead, 't will be more,
When we are shadows both, than 't was before.
When weather-beaten I come back, my hand
Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sunbeams tann'd,
My face and breast of haircloth, and my head
With care's rash sudden storms being o'erspread,1
My body a sack of bones, broken within,
And powder's blue stains scattered on my skin,
If rival fools tax thee to have loved a man
So foul and coarse, as, oh! I may seem than,
This shall say what I was: and thou shalt say,
Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay?
1 harsh sudden hoariness o'erspread.
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