LOVE'S GROWTH

I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,

Because it doth endure

Vicissitude and season, as the grass.

Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix'd of all stuffs, vexing soul or sense,
And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
Love's not so pure and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;
But as all else, being elemented too,

Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,

Love by the spring is grown ;

As in the firmament

Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love's awaken'd root do bud out now.

!

If, as in water stirr'd more circles be

Produced by one, love such additions take,

Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee;

And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get

New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate this spring's increase.

THE ANNIVERSARY

ALL kings, and all their favourites,

All glory of honours, beauties, wits,
The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
Is elder by a year now than it was

When thou and I first one another saw.

All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;

This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday;
Running it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

Two

graves must hide thine and my corse; If one might, death were no divorce. Alas! as well as other princes, we

(Who prince enough in one another be)

Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears,

Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears; But souls where nothing dwells but love

(All other thoughts being inmates) then shall prove This or a love increasèd there above,

When bodies to their graves, souls from their

graves

remove.

And then we shall be throughly blest;
But we no more than all the rest.

Here upon earth we 're kings, and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
Who is so safe as we ? where none can do
Treason to us, except one of us two.

True and false fears let us refrain,

Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain

To write threescore. This is the second of our reign.

CANONIZATION

FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love; Or chide my palsy, or my gout;

My five grey hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout; With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve;

Take you a course, get you a place,

Observe his Honour, or his Grace;

Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate; - what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas! alas! who's injured by my love?

What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill? 12

Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men which quarrels move,

Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;

Call her one, me another fly,