LOVE IS A SICKNESS. LOVE is a sickness full of woes, All remedies refusing; A plant that most with cutting grows, More we enjoy it, more it dies ; Love is a torment of the mind, A tempest everlasting; And Jove hath made it of a kind, More we enjoy it, more it dies ; LOVE. SAMUEL DANIEL. AH! WHAT IS LOVE? AH! what is love? It is a pretty thing, As sweet unto a shepherd as a king, And sweeter too; For kings have cares that wait upon a crown, If country loves such sweet desires gain, His flocks are folded; he comes home at night And merrier too; For kings bethink them what the state require, If country love such sweet desires gain, He kisseth first, then sits as blithe to eat For kings have often fears when they sup, If country loves such sweet desires gain, Upon his couch of straw he sleeps as sound An, how sweet it is to love! Sighs which are from lovers blown Do but gently heave the heart : E'en the tears they shed alone Cure, like trickling balm, their smart. Lovers, when they lose their breath, Bleed away in easy death. Love and Time with reverence use, Which in youth sincere they send: Love, like spring-tides full and high, Till they quite shrink in again. 'T is but rain, and runs not clear. THE AGE OF WISDOM. Ho! pretty page, with the dimpled chin, Wait till you come to forty year. Curly gold locks cover foolish brains; Billing and cooing is all your cheer, Sighing, and singing of midnight strains, Under Bonnybell's window-panes, Wait till you come to forty year. Forty times over let Michaelmas pass; Pledge me round; I bid ye declare, All good fellows whose beards are gray, Did not the fairest of the fair Common grow and wearisome ere Ever a month was past away? The reddest lips that ever have kissed, --- The brightest eyes that ever have shone, May pray and whisper and we not list, Or look away and never be missed, Ere yet ever a month is gone. Gillian's dead! God rest her bier, How I loved her twenty years syne! Marian's married; but I sit here, Alone and merry at forty year, Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. MY TRUE-LOVE HATH MY HEART. My true-love hath my heart, and I have his, He loves my heart, for once it was his own; SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. I SAW TWO CLOUDS AT MORNING. I SAW two clouds at morning, Martha soon did it resign To the beauteous Catharine. Beauteous Catharine gave place (Though loath and angry she to part With the possession of my heart) To Eliza's conquering face. Eliza till this hour might reign, Had she not evil counsels ta'en; Fundamental laws she broke, Mary then, and gentle Anne, And sometimes Mary was the fair, A mighty tyrant she! Had not Rebecca set me free. And Judith reignéd in her stead. One month, three days, and half an hour, Judith held the sovereign power : Wondrous beautiful her face! And so Susanna took her place. And the artillery of her eye, She beat out Susan, by the by. And then a long et cætera. FROM THE THIRD BOOK OF LAWES'S Avres. FAIN Would I love, but that I fear The fair one she 's a mark to all, WISHES FOR THE SUPPOSED MISTRESS. WHOE'ER she be, That not impossible She That shall command my heart and me; Where'er she lie, Locked up from mortal eye In shady leaves of destiny: Till that ripe birth Of studied Fate stand forth, And teach her fair steps to our earth; Till that divine Idea take a shrine Of crystal flesh, through which to shine : - Meet you her, my Wishes, Bespeak her to my blisses, And be ye called, my absent kisses. I wish her beauty That owes not all its duty To gaudy tire, or glist'ring shoe-tie : Something more than Taffeta or tissue can, Or rampant feather, or rich fan. A face that's best By its own beauty drest, And can alone command the rest : |