Here, in the darkness, where this plaster saint Stands nearer than God stands to our distress, And one small candle shines, but not so faint As the far lights of everlastingness, I’d rather kneel than over there, in open day Where Christ is hanging, rather pray To something more like my own clay, Not too divine;
Deflores. What makes your lip so strange? This must not be betwixt us. Beatrice. The man talks wildly. Deflores. Come kisse me with a zeal now. Beatrice. Heaven I doubt him. Deflores. I will not stand so long to beg 'em shortly. Beatrice. Take heed Deflores of forgetfulness, 'twill soon betray us. Deflores. Take you heed first; Faith y'are grown much forgetfull, y'are to blame in't. Beatrice. He's bold, and I am blam'd for't. Deflores. I have eas'd you of your trouble, think on't, I'me in pain, And must be as'd of ou; 'tis a charity, Justice invites your blood to understand me. Beatrice. I dare not. Deflores. Quickly. Beatrice. Oh I never shall, speak if yet further of that I may lose
Thus far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much Unvisited, endeavour'd to retrace My life through its first years, and measured back The way I travell'd when I first began To love the woods and fields; the passion yet Was in its birth, sustain'd, as might befal, By nourishment that came unsought, for still, From week to week, from month to month, we liv'd A round of tumult: duly were our games Prolong'd in summer till the day-light fail'd; No chair remain'd before the doors, the bench And threshold steps were empty; fast asleep The Labourer, and the old Man who had sate, A later lingerer, yet the revelry Continued, and the loud uproar: at last,
Farewell (sweet Cooke-ham) where I first obtained Grace from that grace where perfect grace remained; And where the muses gave their full consent, I should have power the virtuous to content; Where princely palace willed me to indite, The sacred story of the soul’s delight. Farewell (sweet place) where virtue then did rest, And all delights did harbor in her breast; Never shall my sad eyes again behold Those pleasures which my thoughts did then unfold. Yet you (great Lady) Mistress of that place, From whose desires did spring this work of grace; Vouchsafe to think upon those pleasures past, As fleeting worldly joys that could not last, Or, as dim shadows of celestial pleasures,
Why should a foolish marriage vow, Which long ago was made, Oblige us to each other now, When passion is decayed? We loved, and we loved, as long as we could, Till our love was loved out in us both;
AN ANATOMY OF THE WORLD Wherein, by occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the frailty and the decay of this whole world is represented THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone, Whom all do celebrate, who know they have one (For who is sure he hath a soul, unless It see, and judge, and follow worthiness,
Our storm is past, and that storm's tyrannous rage, A stupid calm, but nothing it, doth 'suage. The fable is inverted, and far more A block afflicts, now, than a stork before. Storms chafe, and soon wear out themselves, or us; In calms, Heaven laughs to see us languish thus. As steady'as I can wish that my thoughts were, Smooth as thy mistress' glass, or what shines there, The sea is now; and, as the isles which we Seek, when we can move, our ships rooted be. As water did in storms, now pitch runs out; As lead, when a fir'd church becomes one spout. And all our beauty, and our trim, decays, Like courts removing, or like ended plays. The fighting-place now seamen's rags supply;
[Supposed of Pamphylax the Antiochene: It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth, Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek, And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu: Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest, Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth, Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi, From Xanthus, my wife's uncle, now at peace: Mu and Epsilon stand for my own name. I may not write it, but I make a cross To show I wait His coming, with the rest, And leave off here: beginneth Pamphylax.]
I said, "If one should wet his lips with wine, "And slip the broadest plantain-leaf we find,
I long to talk with some old lover's ghost, Who died before the god of love was born. I cannot think that he, who then lov'd most, Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn. But since this god produc'd a destiny, And that vice-nature, custom, lets it be, I must love her, that loves not me.
Sure, they which made him god, meant not so much, Nor he in his young godhead practis'd it. But when an even flame two hearts did touch, His office was indulgently to fit Actives to passives. Correspondency Only his subject was; it cannot be Love, till I love her, that loves me.
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