2

We're tapers too, and at our own cost die ;
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.

The phoenix riddle hath more wit

By us; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and
Mysterious by this love,

prove

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse

Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,

We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs ;
And by these hymns all shall approve
Us canonized for love,

And thus invoke us, “You, whom reverend love

Made one another's hermitage;

You, to whom love was peace, that now is

rage;

Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes,

So made such mirrors and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize-
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."

2-2

But come bad chance,

And we join to it our strength,

And we teach it art and length,

Itself o'er us to advance.

When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,

But sigh'st my soul away;

When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,

My life's blood doth decay.

LOVE'S RECORDS 13

I'LL tell thee now, dear love, what thou shalt do
To 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