LOVE'S RECORDS 13

I'LL tell thee now, dear love, what thou shalt do
Το anger destiny, as she doth us;

How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus,
And how posterity shall know it too;

How thine may out-endure

Sibyl's glory, and obscure

Her who from Pindar could allure, 14

And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, '5

And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and

Study our manuscripts, those myriads

Of letters which have pass'd 'twixt thee and me; Thence write our annals, and in them will be To all whom love's subliming fire invades

Rule and example found.

There the faith of any ground

No schismatic will dare to wound,

That sees, how Love this grace to us affords,
To make, to keep, to use, to be these his recòrds.

This book, as long-lived as the elements,

Or as the world's form, this all-gravèd tome

In cypher writ, or new made idiom,
We for Love's clergy only are instruments;
When this book is made thus,

Should again the ravenous

Vandals and Goths invade us,

Learning were safe; in this our universe,

Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels

verse.

THE COMPUTATION

FOR

my first twenty years, since yesterday,

I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away;

For forty more I fed on favours past,

And forty on hopes, that thou wouldst they might

last;

Tears drown'd one hundred, and sighs blew out two;
A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you;
Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life; but think that I

Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?

THE LEGACY

WHEN last I died, and, dear, I die

As often as from thee I go,

Though it be but an hour ago

(And lovers' hours be full eternity)

I can remember yet, that I

Something did say, and something did bestow,

Though I be dead, which meant me I should be
Mine own executor and legacy.

I heard me say,

"Tell her anon,

That myself," that is you, not I,

"Did kill me;

" and when I felt me die,

I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;

But I alas! could there find none,

When I had ripp'd, and search'd where hearts should

lie;

It kill'd me again, that I who still was true

In life, in my last will should cozen you.

Yet I found something like a heart,
But colours it, and corners had;

It was not good, it was not bad,

It was entire to none, and few had part;

As good as could be made by art

It seem'd, and therefore for our loss be sad.
I meant to send that heart instead of mine,
But O! no man could hold it, for 't was thine.