ELEGY XIII.

HIS PARTING FROM HER.

SINCE she must go, and I must mourn, come night,

Environ me with darkness, whilst I write :

Shadow that hell unto me, which alone

I am to suffer, when my love is gone.
Alas! the darkest magic cannot do it,

And that great hell to boot are shadows to it.
Should Cynthia quit thee, Venus, and each star,
It would not form one thought dark as mine are;
I could lend them obscureness now, and say
Out of myself, there should be no more day.
Such is already my self-want of sight,
Did not the fire within me force a light.
O Love, that fire and darkness should be mixt,
Or to thy triumphs such strange torments fixt!
Is 't because thou thyself art blind, that we,
Thy martyrs, must no more each other see?
Or tak'st thou pride to break us on thy wheel,
And view old Chaos in the pains we feel?
Or have we left undone some mutual rite,

That thus with parting thou seek'st us to spite?
No, no. The fault is mine, impute it to me,
Or rather to conspiring Destiny;

Of becks, winks, looks, and often under boards Spoke dialogues with our feet far from our

words?

Have we proved all the secrets of our art,
Yea, thy pale inwards and thy panting heart?
And after all this passed purgatory

Must sad divorce make us the vulgar story ?
First let our eyes be riveted quite through
Our turning brains, and both our lips grow to:
Let our arms clasp like ivy, and our fear
Freeze us together, that we may stick here;
Till Fortune, that would ruin us with the deed,
Strain his eyes open, and yet make them bleed.
For Love it cannot be, whom hitherto

I have accused, should such a mischief do.
O Fortune, thou 'rt not worth my least exclaim,
And plague enough thou hast in thy own name:
Do thy great worst, my friend and I have arms,
Though not against thy strokes, against thy harms.
Rend us in sunder, thou canst not divide
Our bodies so, but that our souls are tied,

And we can love by letters still, and gifts,

And thoughts, and dreams; Love never wanteth shifts.

I will not look upon the quickening sun,

But straight her beauty to my sense shall run ; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Waters suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages; the Spring, How fresh our love was in the beginning;

ELEGIES.

The Summer, how it inripened the year;
And Autumn, what our golden harvests were.
The Winter I'll not think on to spite thee,
But count it a lost season, so shall she.
And, dearest friend, since we must part, drown
night

With hope of day; burdens well borne are light
The cold and darkness longer hang somewhere,
Yet Phoebus equally lights all the sphere.
And what we cannot in like portion pay,
The world enjoys in mass, and so we may.
Be ever then yourself, and let no woe
Win on your health, your youth, your beauty: so
Declare yourself base Fortune's enemy,
No less be your contempt than her inconstancy:
That I may grow enamoured on your mind,
When my own thoughts I here neglected find.
And this to the comfort of my dear I vow,
My deeds shall still be, what my deeds are now;
The poles shall move to teach me ere I start,
And when I change my Love, I'll change my
heart;

Nay, if I wax but cold in my desire,

Think, heaven hath motion lost, and the world fire:
Much more I could; but many words have made
That oft suspected, which men most persuade:
Take therefore all in this; I love so true,
As I will never look for less in you.

ELEGY XIV.

JULIA.

HARK, news, O Envy, thou shalt hear descried
My Julia; who as yet was ne'er envied.
To vomit gall in slander, swell her veins
With calumny, that hell itself disdains,
Is her continual practice, does her best,
To tear opinion ev'n out of the breast

Of dearest friends, and (which is worse than vile)
Sticks jealousy in wedlock; her own child
'Scapes not the showers of envy: To repeat
The monstrous fashions, how, were alive to eat
Dear reputation; would to God she were
But half so loath to act vice, as to hear
My mild reproof: Lived Mantuan now again,
That female Mastix to limn with his pen
This she Chimera, that hath eyes of fire,
Burning with anger (anger feeds desire)
Tongued like the night-crow, whose ill-boding cries
Give out for nothing but new injuries.
Her breath like to the juice in Tenarus,

That blasts the springs, though ne'er so prosperous.
Her hands, I know not how, used more to spill
The food of others, than herself to fill.
But oh her mind, that Orcus, which includes
Legions of mischief, countless multitudes