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Yet, I would not have all yet,
He that hath all can have no more,
And since my love doth every day admit [store;
New growth, thou should'st have new rewards in
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gav'st it:
Lovers riddles are, that though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing sav'st it:
But we will love a way more liberal,
Than changing hearts, to join us, so we shall
Be one, and one another's all.

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Yesternight the Sun went hence,
And yet is here to day,

He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way:
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Hastier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.

O how feeble is man's power,
That if good fortune fall,
Cannot add another hour,
Nor a lost hour recall!

But come, bad chance,

And we join to 't our strength, And we teach it art and length, Itself o'er us t' advance.

When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st no wind,
But sigh'st my soul away;
When thou weep'st unkindly kind,
My life's blood doth decay.

It cannot be

That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st;
If in thine my life thou waste,
That art the life of me.

Let not thy divining heart
Forethink me any ill,
Destiny may take thy part,
And may thy fears fulfil;
But think that we
Are but laid aside to sleep:
They, who one another keep
Alive, ne'er parted be.

I can remember yet, that I

Something did say, and something did bestow;
Though I be dead, which sent me, I might be
Mine own executor, and legacy.

I heard me say, tell her anon,
That myself, that is you, not I,
Did kill me, and when I felt me die,

I bid me send my heart, when I was gone,
But I, alas! could find there none.

[lie,

When I had ripp'd, and search'd where hearts should It kill'd me again, that I, who still was true

In life, in my last will should cozen you.

Yet I found something like a heart,
For colours it and corners had,

It was not good, it was not bad,

It was entire to none, and few had part:
As good, as could be made by art,

It seem'd, and therefore for our loss be sad,

I meant to send that heart instead of mine,
But oh! no man could hold it, for 't was thine.

A FEVER.

On do not die, for I shall hate

All women so, when thou art gone, That thee I shall not celebrate,

When I remember thou wast one.

But yet thou canst not die, I know;

To leave this world behind is death; But when thou from this world wilt go,

The whole world vapours in thy breath.

Or if, when thou, the world's soul, goest,
It stay, 't is but thy carcass then,
The fairest woman, but thy ghost;

But corrupt worms, the worthiest men.

O wrangling schools, that search what fire Shall burn this world, had none the wit Unto this knowledge to aspire,

That this her fever might be it!

And yet she cannot waste by this,

Nor long endure this torturing wrong,
For more corruption needful is,
To fuel such a fever long.

These burning fits but meteors be,
Whose matter in thee soon is spent.
Thy beauty, and all parts, which are thee,
Are an unchangeable firmament.

Yet 't was of my mind, seizing thee,
Though it in thee cannot persever;
For I had rather owner be

Of thee one hour, than all else ever.

THE LEGACY.

WHEN last I dy'd (and, dear, I die
As often as from thee I go,
Though it be but an hour ago,
And lovers' hours be full eternity)

AIR AND ANGELS.

TWICE or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worship'd be:

Still when, to where thou wert, I came, Some lovely glorious nothing did I see;

But since my soul, whose child love is, Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, More subtile than the parent is, Love must not be, but take a body too; And therefore what thou wert, and who, I bid love ask, and now, That it assume thy body, I allow,

And fix itself in thy lips, eyes, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
And so more steadily t' have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration
I saw, I had Love's pinnace overfraught;

Thy every hair for love to work upon

Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere;
Then as an angel face, and wings

Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere;
Just such disparity

As is 'twixt air and angel's purity,

'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.

Only our love hath no decay: This no to morrow hath, nor yesterday; Running it never runs from us away, But truly keeps his first-last-everlasting day.

Two graves must hide thine and my corse: If one might, death were no divorce, Alas! as well as other princes, we, (Who prince enough in one another be) Must leave at last in death these eyes and ears, Oft fed with true oaths, and with sweet salt tears: But souls where nothing dwells but love; (All other thoughts being inmates) then shall prove This, or a love increased there above, [remove. When bodies to their graves, souls from their graves

And then we shall be throughly bless'd: But now no more than all the rest. Here upon Earth we' are kings, and none but we Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be; Who is so safe as we? where none can do Treason to us, except one of us two.

True and false fears let us refrain:

Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore, this is the second of our reign.

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Till my return, repair

And recompact my scatter'd body so,
As all the virtuous powers, which are
Fix'd in the stars, are said to flow
Into such characters as graved be,

When those stars had supremacy.

So since this name was cut,

When love and grief their exaltation had,

No door 'gainst this name's influence shut;
As much more loving, as more sad,

'T will make thee; and thou should'st, till I return, Since I die daily, daily mourn.

When thy inconsiderate hand

Flings ope this casement, with my trembling name, To look on one, whose wit or land

New battery to thy heart may frame,
Then think this name alive, and that thou thus
In it offend'st my genius.

And when thy melted maid,
Corrupted by thy lover's gold or page,
His letter at thy pillow' hath laid,
Dispute thou it, and tame thy rage.
If thou to him begin'st to thaw for this,
May my name step in, and hide his.

And if this treason go

To an overt act, and that thou write again;
In superscribing, my name flow
Into thy fancy from the pen,

So in forgetting thou remembrest right,

And unaware to me shalt write.

But glass and lines must be

No means our firm substantial love to keep;
Near death inflicts this lethargy,
And thus I murmur in my sleep;

Impute this idle talk to that I go,

For dying men talk often so.

TWICKNAM GARDEN.

BLASTED with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
Hither I come to seek the spring,
And at mine eyes, and at mine ears
Receive such balm as else cures every thing:
But O, self-traitor, I do bring

The spider love, which transubstantiates all,
And can convert manna to gall,
And that this place may thoroughly be thought
True Paradise, I have the serpent brought.

'T were wholesomer for me, that winter did
Benight the glory of this place,
And that a grave frost did forbid

These trees to laugh, and mock me to my face;
But since I cannot this disgrace
Endure, nor leave this garden, Love, let me
Some senseless piece of this place be;
Make me a mandrake, so I may grow here,
Or a stone fountain weeping out my year.

Hither with crystal phjals, lovers, come,

And take my tears, which are love's wine, And try your mistress' tears at home, For all are false, that taste not just like mine; Alas! hearts do not in eyes shine,

Nor can you more judge woman's thoughts by tears,
Than by her shadow, what she wears.

O perverse sex, where none is true but she,
Who's therefore true, because her truth kills me.

VALEDICTION TO HIS BOOK.

I'LL tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do To anger destiny, as she doth us;

How I shall stay, though she eloigne 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,

And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find and name.

Study our manuscripts, those myriads

Of letters, which have past '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 records.

This book, as long liv'd as the elements,

Or as the world's form, this all-graved tomb,
In cipher 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, [verse. Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels

Here love's divine (since all divinity

Is love or wonder) may find all they seek, Whether abstracted spiritual love they like, Their souls exhal'd with what they do not see; Or loath so to amuse

Faith's infirmities, they chuse

Something, which they may see and use; For though mind be the Heaven, where love doth Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it. [sit,

Here more than in their books may lawyers find,
Both by what titles mistresses are ours,
And how prerogative these states devours,
Transferr'd from Love himself to womankind :
Who, though from heart and eyes
They exact great subsidies,

Forsake him, who on them relies,
And for the cause honour or conscience give;
Chimeras, vain as they, or their prerogative.

Here statesmen, (or of them they which can read)
May of their occupation find the grounds,
Love and their art alike it deadly wounds,
If to consider, what 't is, one proceed,
In both they do excel,

Who the present govern well,

Whose weakness none doth or dares tell ; In this thy book such will there something see, As in the Bible some can find out alchymv.

Thus vent thy thoughts; abroad I 'll study thee,
As he removes far off, that great heights takes:
How great love is, presence best trial makes,
But absence tries, how long this love will be;
To take a latitude,

Sun, or stars, are fitliest view'd

At their brightest; but to conclude Of longitudes, what other way have we, But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be?

If, as in water stirr'd more circles be
Produc'd by one, love such additions take,
Those, like so many spheres, but one Heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee;

And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get

New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate this spring's increase.

COMMUNITY.

GOOD we must love, and must hate ill,
For ill is ill, and good good still;

But there are things indifferent,
Which we may neither hate nor love,
But one, and then another prove,

As we shall find out fancy bent.

If then at first wise Nature had
Made women either good or bad,

Then some we might hate, and some chuse,

But since she did them so create,
That we may neither love nor hate,

Only this rests, all all may use.

If they were good, it would be seen,
Good is as visible as green,

And to all eyes itself betrays:
If they were bad, they could not last,
Bad doth itself and others waste,

So they deserve nor blame nor praise.

But they are ours, as fruits are ours,
He that but tastes, he that devours,

And he that leaves all, doth as well; Chang'd loves are but chang'd sorts of meat; And when he hath the kernel eat,

Who doth not fling away the shell?

LOVE'S GROWTH.

I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure

Vicissitude and season, as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make 't more.

But if this medicine love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix'd of all stuffs, vexing soul or sense,
And of the Sun his active vigour borrow,
Love's not so pure an abstract, as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;
But, as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,
Love by the spring is grown;
As in the firmament

Stars by the Sun are not enlarg'd, but shown.
Gentle love-deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love's awakened root do bud out now.

LOVE'S EXCHANGE.

Love, any devil else but you

Would for a giv'n soul give something too;
At court your fellows every day

Give th' art of rhyming, huntmanship, or play,
For them, which were their own before;
Only I've nothing, which gave more,
But am, alas! by being lowly lower.

I ask no dispensation now
To falsify a tear, a sigh, a vow,

I do not sue from thee to draw

A non obstante on Nature's law;
These are prerogatives, they inhere
In thee and thine; none should forswear,
Except that he Love's minion were.

Give me thy weakness, make me blind
Both ways, as thou, and thine, in eyes and mind:
Love let me never know that this

Is love, or that love childish is.

Let me not know that others know

That she knows my pains, lest that so

A tender shame make me mine own new woe.

If thou give nothing, yet thou 'rt just, Because I would not thy first motions trust: Small towns which stand stiff, till great shot Enforce them, by war's law condition not; Such in love's warfare is my case,

I may not article for grace,

Having put Love at last to show this face.

This face, by which he could command
And change th' idolatry of any land;
This face, which, wheresoe'er it comes,

Can call vow'd men from cloisters, dead from tombs,
And melt both poles at once, and store

Deserts with cities, and make more

Mines in the earth, than quarries were before.

For this Love is enrag'd with me,

Yet kills not; if I must example be

To future rebels; if th' unborn

Must learn, by my being cut up and torn;
Kill and dissect me, Love! for this
Torture against thine own end is,
Rack'd carcasses make ill anatomies.

CONFINED LOVE.

SOME man, unworthy to be possessor, Of old or new love, himself being false or weak, Thought his pain and shame would be lesser If on womankind he might his anger wreak,

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SOME that have deeper digg'd Love's mine than I,
Say, where his centric happiness doth lie:
I've lov'd, and got, and told,
But should I love, get, tell, till I were old,
I should not find that hidden mystery;
Oh, 't is imposture all:

And as no chymic yet th' elixir got,
But glorifies his pregnant pot,
If by the way to him befall
Some odoriferous thing, or medicinal,

So lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-seeming summer's night.

Our ease, our thrift, our honour, and our day,
Shall we for this vain bubble's shadow pay?
Ends love in this, that my man
Can be as happy as I; if he can

Endure the short scorn of a bridegroom's play!
That loving wretch that swears,

'T is not the bodies marry, but the minds, Which he in her angelic finds,

Would swear as justly, that he hears,

In that day's rude hoarse minstrelsy, the spheres. Hope not for mind in women; at their best Sweetness and wit, they 're but mummy possest.

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THE CURSE.

WHOEVER guesses, thinks, or dreams he knows
Who is my mistress, wither by this curse;
Him only for his purse

May some dull whore to love dispose,
And then yield unto all that are his foes;
May he be scorn'd by one, whom all else scorn,
Forswear to others, what to her h' hath sworn,
With fear of missing, shame of getting torn.

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