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Or do they reach his judging mind, that he
Should now love less what he did love to see?
That which in him was fair and delicate

Was but the milk which, in love's childish state,
Did nurse it, who now is grown strong enough
To feed on that, which to disused 1 tastes seems
tough.

1

ELEGY VI.

OH! let me not serve so as those men serve,
Whom honour's smokes at once fattén 2 and sterve,
Poorly enriched with great men's words or looks;
Nor so write my name in thy loving books,
As those idolatrous flatterers, which still

Their Prince's styles which many realms3 fulfill
Whence they no tribute have, and where no sway.
Such services I offer as shall pay

Themselves; I hate dead names; oh then let me
Favorite in ordinary, or no favorite be.

When my soul was in her own body sheathed,
Nor yet by oaths betrothed, nor kisses breathed
Into my purgatory, faithless thee,

Thy heart seemed wax, and steel thy constancy:
So careless flowers, strowed on the water's face,
The curled whirlpools suck, smack, and embrace,
1 weak, 1649, '54, '69. 2 flatter, 1669. 3 names, ibid. 4 bear, ibid.

Yet drown them; so the taper's beamy eye,
Amorously twinkling, beckons the giddy fly,
Yet burns his wings; and such the Devil is,
Scarce visiting them who are entirely his.
When I behold a stream, which, from the spring,
Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring,
Or in a speechless slumber, calmly ride

Her wedded channel's bosom, and then 1 chide
And bend her brows and swell, if any bough
Do but stoop down or 2 kiss her upmost 3 brow,
Yet, if her often-gnawing kisses win
The traitorous banks to gape and let her in,
She rusheth violently and doth divorce
Her from her native and her long-kept course,
And roars and braves it, and in gallant scorn,
In flattering eddies promising return,

She flouts the channel who 5 thenceforth is dry,
Then say I, that is she, and this am I.

Yet let not thy deep bitterness beget

Careless despair in me, for that will whet

My mind to scorn; and, oh! Love dulled with pain,
Was ne'er so wise, nor well armed, as Disdain.
Then with new eyes I shall survey thee, and spy
Death in thy cheeks and darkness in thine eye:
Though hope bred faith and love, thus taught, I
shall,

As nations do from Rome, from thy love fall;

1 there. 2 to. 3 utmost. 4 her. 5 which. 8 Through, ibid.

6 ah! 1669. 7 survey
9 breed.

and spy,

ibid.

My hate shall outgrow thine, and utterly
I will renounce thy dalliance; and when I
Am the recúsant, in that resolute state
What hurts it me to be excommunicate?

ELEGY VII.

NATURE'S lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, oh! thou dost prove1
Too subtile! Fool, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand,
Nor could'st thou judge the difference of the air
Of sighs, and say, This lies, this sounds despair,
Nor by the eye's water call2 a malady
Desperately hot, or changing feverously.
I had not taught thee then the alphabet
Of flowers, how they, devicefully being set
And bound up, might with speechless secrecy
Deliver errands mutely and mutually.
Remember, since all thy words used to be
To every suitor, "Ay, if my friends agree";

Since household charms, thy husband's name to teach,
Were all the love-tricks that thy wit could reach,
And since an hour's discourse could scarce have made
One answer in thee, and that ill-arrayed
In broken proverbs and torn sentences,
Thou art not by so many duties his,

1 how thou dost prove, 1669. 2 know. 3 I.

[graphic]

That, from the world's common having severed thee,
Inlaid thee, neither to be seen, nor see,

As mine, who have with amorous delicacies
Refined thee into a blissful paradise.

1

Thy graces and good words 1 my creatures be,
I planted knowledge and life's tree in thee,
Which, oh! shall strangers taste? Must I, alas !
Frame and enamel plate, and drink in glass?
Chafe wax for others' seals? break a colt's force,
And leave him then being made a ready horse?

ELEGY VIII.

THE COMPARISON.

As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,

As that which from chafed muskcat's pores doth trill,
As the almighty balm of th' early East,
Such are the sweat-drops of my mistress' breast,
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets.
Rank sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles,
Like spermatic issue of ripe menstruous boils,
Or like the scum, which, by need's lawless law
Enforced, Sanserra's starved men did draw
From parboiled shoes and boots, and all the rest
Which were with any sovereign fatness blest;

1 works, 1669.

And like vile stones lying1 in saffroned tin,
Or warts, or weals, it hangs upon her skin.
Round as the world's her head on every side,
Like to the fatal ball which fell on Ide,
Or that, whereof God had such jealousy,
As for the ravishing thereof we die.

Thy head is like a rough-hewn statue of jet,

Where marks for eyes, nose, mouth, are yet scarce set,
Like the first chaos, or flat-seeming face

Of Cynthia, when th' earth's shadows her embrace.
Like Proserpine's white beauty-keeping chest,
Or Jove's best fortune's urn, is her fair breast;
Thine 's like worm-eaten trunks clothed in seal's skin,
Or grave, that 's dust without, and stink within.
And like that slender stalk, at whose end stands
The woodbine quivering, are her arms and hands;
Like rough-barked elm-boughs, or the russet skin
Of men late scourged for madness or for sin,
Like sun-parched quarters on the city gate,
Such is thy tanned skin's lamentable state,
And like a bunch of ragged carrots stand
The short swollen fingers of her gouty hand.3
Then like the chymic's masculine equal fire,
Which in the limbec's warm womb doth inspire
Into th' earth's worthless part a soul of gold,
Such cherishing heat her best-loved part doth hold;
Thine 's like the dread mouth of a fired gun,
Or like hot liquid metals newly run

1 vile lying stones, 1635, '39, '49, '54. 2 grav'd, 1669.

3 thy gouty hand, 1635, '39, '49, '54; thy mistress' hand, 1669. 4 dirt.

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