NATURE'S lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, oh! thou dost prove
Too subtile! Fool, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand:
Nor could'st thou judge the difference of the air
Of sighs, and say, this lies, this sounds despair:
Nor by the eye's water know a malady
Desperately hot, or changing feverously.
I had not taught thee then the alphabet
Of flowers, how they, devicefully being set
And bound up, might with speechless secrecy
Deliver errands mutely and mutually.
Remember, since all thy words used to be
To every suitor, Ay, if my friends agree;
Since household charms, thy husband's name to
teach,
Were all the love-tricks that thy wit could reach;
And since an hour's discourse could scarce have
One answer in thee, and that ill-arrayed
In broken proverbs and torn sentences;
Thou art not by so many duties his,
(That, from the world's common having severed thee,
Inlaid thee, neither to be seen, nor see,)
As mine, who have with amorous delicacies
Refined thee into a blissful paradise.
Thy graces and good works my creatures be
I planted knowledge and life's tree in thee,
Which, oh! shall strangers taste? Must I, a
Frame and enamel plate, and drink in glass
Chafe wax for other's seals? break a colt's f
And leave him then being made a ready hor
As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
As that, which from chafed muskcat's
As the almighty balm of the early East, Such are the sweat-drops of my mistress' breast And on her neck her skin such lustre sets, They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets. Rank sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles, Like spermatic issue of ripe menstruous boils; Or like the scum, which, by need's lawless law Enforced, Sanserra's starved men did draw From parboiled shoes and boots, and all the rest. Which were with any sovereign fatness blest;
And like vile lying stones in saffroned tin,
Or warts, or weals, it hangs upon her skin.
Round as the world's her head, on every side,
Like to the fatal ball which fell on Ide:
Or that, whereof God had such jealousy,
As for the ravishing thereof we die.
Thy head is like a rough-hewn statue of jet,
Where marks for eyes, nose, mouth, are yet scarce
Like the first Chaos, or flat seeming face
Of Cynthia, when the earth's shadows her embrace.
Like Proserpine's white beauty-keeping chest,
Or Jove's best fortune's urn, is her fair breast.
Thine 's like worm-eaten trunks clothed in seal's
Or grave, that's dust without, and stink within.
And like that slender stalk, at whose end stands
The woodbine quivering, are her arms and hands.
Like rough-barked elm-boughs, or the russet skin
Of men late scourged for madness or for sin;
Like sun-parched quarters on the city gate,
Such is thy tanned skin's lamentable state:
And like a bunch of ragged carrots stand
The short swollen fingers of thy mistress' hand.
Then like the chymic's masculine equal fire,
Which in the limbec's warm womb doth inspire
Into the earth's worthless dirt a soul of gold,
Such cherishing heat her best-loved part doth hold.
Thine 's like the dread mouth of a fired gun,
Or like hot liquid metals newly run
Into clay moulds, or like to that Ætna,
Where round about the grass is burnt away.
Are not your kisses then as filthy and more,
As a worm sucking an envenomed sore?
Doth not thy fearful hand in feeling quake,
As one which gathering flowers still fears a snake?
Is not your last act harsh and violent,
As when a plough a stony ground doth rent?
So kiss good turtles, so devoutly nice
Are priests reverent in handling sacrifice,
And nice in searching wounds the surgeon is,
As we, when we embrace, or touch, or kiss:
Leave her, and I will leave comparing thus,
She and comparisons are odious.
Yet lies not
Vowed to
And here,
No Spring, nor Summer's beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
Young beauties force our loves,* and that's a rape ;
This doth but counsel, yet you cannot 'scape.
If 't were a shame to love, here 't were no shame:
Affections here take Reverence's name.
*Var. your love. Ed. 1635.
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