I can love her, and her, and you, and you;

I can love any, so she be not true.

Will no other vice content you?

Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers? Or have you all old vices worn, and now would find out others?

Or doth a fear that men are true torment you?

Oh! we are not, be not you so;

Let me, and do you twenty know.

Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.
Must I who came to travel thorough you,

Grow your fix'd subject because you are true?

Venus heard me sing this song,

20

And by love's sweetest sweet, variety, she swore
She heard not this till now; it should be so no more.
She went, examined, and return'd ere long,
And said, Alas! some two or three

Poor heretics in love there be

Which think to 'stablish dangerous constancy;
But I have told them, since you will be true,
You shall be true to them who 're false to you.

27

LOVE'S USURY.

FOR every hour that thou wilt spare me now

I will allow,

Usurious God of Love! twenty to thee,

When with my brown my grey hairs equal be;
Till then, Love! let my body range, and let
Me travel, sojourn, snatch, plot, have, forget,
Resume my last year's relict; think that yet
We 'had never met.

Let me think any rival's letter mine,
And at next nine

Keep midnight's promise; mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the lady of that delay;
Only let me love none, no, not the sport
From country grass to comfitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.

This bargain's good; if when I'm old I be
Inflam'd by thee,

If thine own honour or my shame or pain

Thou covet most, at that age thou shalt gain:
Do thy will then; then subject and degree,
And fruit of love, Love! I submit to thee:
Spare me till then, I'll bear it, tho' she be
One that loves ine,

Volume 11.

B

10

20

24

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's flout;

With wealth your state, your mind with arts improvę.
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour or his Grace,
Or the King's real or his stamped face
Contemplate; what you will approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas! alas! who's injur'd by my love?
What merchants' 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 reins fill

Add one more to the plaugy bill?

Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still

Litigious men whom quarrels move,

Tho' she and I do love.

Call's what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another flie;

We 'are tapers too, and at our own cost die;

And we in us find th' eagle and the dove;

10

The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two, being one, are it;
So to one neutral thing both sexes sit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

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 those hymns all shall approve
Us canoniz'd 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 our love.

Donne.]

Bij

30

But where 's that wise man that would not be I,
If she would not deny ?

Then as th' earth's inward narrow crooked lanes
Do purge sea water's fretful salt away,

Thro' rhime's vexation I should them allay.

I thought if I could draw my pains

Grief brought to number cannot be so fierce,
For he tames it that fetters it in verse:

10

But when I have done so,

Some man, his art or voice to show,
Doth set and sing my pain,

And, by delighting many, frees again
Grief, which verse did restrain.

To love and grief tribute of verse belongs,

But not of such as pleases when 't is read;
Both are increased by such songs;

For both their triumphs so are published,

20

And I, which was two fools, do so grow three:
Who are a little wise the best fools be.

22