Into clay moulds, or like to that Aetná,
Where round about the grass is burnt away.
Are not your kisses then as filthy, and more,
As a worm sucking an invenomed sore?
Doth not thy fearful hand in feeling quake,
As one which gathering flowers still fears a snake?
Is not your last act harsh and violent,
As where1 a plough a stony ground doth rent?
So kiss good turtles, so devoutly nice
Are priests in handling reverend sacrifice,2
And nice in searching wounds the surgeon is,
As we, when we embrace, or touch, or kiss:
Leave her, and I will leave comparing thus,
She and comparisons are odious.
No spring nor summer beauty hath such
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape;
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot scape. If 't were a shame to love, here 't were no shame; Affections here take Reverence's name.
1 when. 2 A priest is in his handling sacrifice, 1669. 3 summer's. 4 your love, 1635, '39, '49, '54. our loves, 1669.
Were her first years the golden age? that 's true;
But now they are1 gold oft tried, and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time;
This is her tolerable 2 tropic clime.
Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence, He in a fever wishes pestilence.
Call not these wrinkles graves; if graves they were,
They were Love's graves, for else he is nowhere. Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit
Vowed to this trench, like an anachorit,
And here, till her's, which must be his death, come,
He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb.
Here dwells he; though he sojourn everywhere
In progress, yet his standing-house is here,
Here, where still evening is, not noon nor night,
Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight.
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at revels, you at council 4 sit.
This is Love's timber, youth his underwood;
There he, as wine in June, enrages blood,
Which then comes seasonablest, when our taste
And appetite to other things is past.
Xerxes' strange Lydian love, the platane tree,
Was loved for age, none being so large as she,
Or else because, being young, nature did bless
Her youth with age's glory, barrenness.
If we love things long sought, age is a thing
Which we are fifty years in compassing;
1 she 's. 2 habitable. 3 or. 4 councils, 1669.
If transitory things, which soon decay,
Age must be loveliest at the latest day.
But name not winter-faces, whose skin 's slack,
Lank as an unthrift's purse, but a soul's 1 sack,
Whose eyes seek light within, for all here 's shade,
Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than made,
Whose every tooth to a several place is gone
To vex their souls 2 at resurrection,
Name not these living death's-heads 3 unto me,
For these not anciënt but antique be : 4
I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay
With tombs than cradles, to wear out a 5 day. Since such love's motion natural is, may still My love descend, and journey down the hill, Not panting after growing beauties; so
I shall ebb out with them, who homeward go.
IMAGE of her, whom I love more than she
Whose fair impression in my faithful heart
Makes me her medal, and makes her love me,
As kings do coins, to which their stamps impart
1 fool's, 1635, '39, '49, '54. 2 the soul, 1669. 3 death-heads.
4 not ancients but antiques be, 1635, '39, '49, '54. 5 the, 1669.
8 This is without title in the edition of 1633.
The value, go, and take my heart from hence,
Which now is grown too great and good for me.
Honours oppress weak spirits, and our sense
Strong objects dull; the more, the less we see.
When you are gone, and Reason gone with you,
Then Fantasy is queen, and soul, and all;
She can present joys meaner than you do,
Convenient, and more proportional;
So if I dream I have you, I have you;
For all our joys are but fantastical.
And so I scape the pain, for pain is true;
And sleep, which locks up sense, doth lock out all. After a such 1 fruition I shall wake,
And, but the waking, nothing shall repent;
And shall to Love more thankful sonnets make,
Than if more honour, tears, and pains were spent.
But dearest heart, and dearer image, stay,
Alas! true joys at best are dream2 enough;
Though you stay here, you pass too fast away,
For even at first life's taper is a snuff.
Filled with her love, may I be rather grown
Mad with much heart, than idiot with none.
1 such a, 1669. 2 dreams, ibid.
UPON THE LOSS OF HIS MISTRESS'S CHAIN,
FOR WHICH HE MADE SATISFACTION.
Nor that in colour it was like thy hair,
For armlets of that thou mayest let me wear,2
Nor that thy hand it oft embraced and kist,
For so it had that good which oft I mist,
Nor for that silly old morality,
That, as these links were knit, our love 3 should be,
Mourn I that I thy sevenfold chain have lost;
Nor for the luck sake, but the bitter cost.
Oh! shall twelve righteous angels which as yet
No leaven of vile solder did admit,
Nor yet by any way have strayed or gone
From the first state of their creation,
Angels which heaven commanded to provide
All things to me, and be my faithful guide
To gain new friends, t' appease great enemies,
To comfort my soul when I lie or rise,
Shall these twelve innocents by thy severe
Sentence, dread judge, my sin's great burden bear?
1 The title "The Bracelet" is omitted in the editions of 1639, '49, '54. 2 Armlets of that thou may'st still let me wear, 1669.
3 loves, ibid. 4 old, ibid.
|