THE RELIC

WHEN my grave is broke up again
Some second guest to entertain,
And he that digs it, spies

A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
Will not he let us alone,

And think that there a loving couple lies,
Who thought that this device might be some way

To make their souls at the last busy day
Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?

If this fall in a time or land

Where mass-devotion doth command,
Then he that digs us up will bring
Us to the bishop or the king,

To make us relics; then

Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I

A something else thereby;

All women shall adore us, and some men.
And, since at such time miracles are sought,
I would that age were by this paper taught
What miracles we harmless lovers wrought.

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.

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

In that

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;