First we loved well and faithfully,

Yet knew not what we loved, nor why;
Difference of sex no more we knew
Than our guardian angels do;

Coming and going we

Perchance might kiss, but not between those meals;
Our hands ne'er touch'd the seals,

Which nature, injured by late law, sets free.9
These miracles we did; but now alas!

All measure, and all language, I should pass,
Should I tell what a miracle she was.

THE DAMP

WHEN I am dead, and doctors know not why, And my friends' curiosity

Will have me cut up to survey each part,

When they shall find your picture in my heart, You think a sudden damp of love

Will thorough all their senses move, And work on them as me, and so prefer Your murder to the name of massacre.

Poor victories! but if you dare be brave,

And pleasure in your conquest have,

First kill th' enormous giant, your Disdain; And let th' enchantress Honour next be slain; And like a Goth or Vandal rise,

Deface recòrds and histories

Of your own arts and triumphs over men,
And without such advantage kill me then,

For I could muster up, as well as you,

My giants, and my

witches too,

Which are vast Constancy and Secretness;
But these I neither look for nor profess.

Kill me as woman, let me die

As a mere man ; do you but try

Your passive valour, and you shall find then, In that you have odds enough of any man.

A NOCTURNAL UPON ST. LUCY'S DAY

BEING THE SHORTEST DAY

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,
Lucy's who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;

The world's whole sap is sunk ;

The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's-feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compared with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am a very dead thing,

In whom Love wrought new alchemy.

For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness;

He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death

things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that 's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;

I, by Love's limbec, am the grave
Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so

Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow,
To be two chaoses, when we did show
Care to aught else; and often absences

Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)

Of the first nothing the elixir grown;

Were I a man, that I were one

I needs must know; I should prefer,

If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,

And love;

all, all some properties invest;

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
At this time to the Goat is run

To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,

Since she enjoys her long night's festival.
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.