If chaste and pure devotion of my youth,
Or glorie of my Aprill-springing yeeres,
Unfained love, in naked simple truth,
A thousand vowes, a thousand sighes and teares:

Or if a world of faithfull service done,
Words, thoughts, and deeds, devoted to her honor,
Or eyes that have beheld her as theyr sunne,
With admiration, ever looking on her.

A lyfe, that never joyd but in her love,
A soule, that ever hath ador'd her name,
A fayth, that time nor fortune could not move,
A Muse, that unto heaven hath raisd her fame.

Those teares which quench my hope, still kindle my desire,
Those sighes which coole my hart, are coles unto my love,
Disdayne Ice to my life, is to my soule a fire,
With teares, sighes, & disdaine, thys contrary I prove.

Quenchles desire, makes hope burne, dryes my teares,
Love heats my hart, my hart-heat my sighes warmeth,
With my soules fire, my life disdaine out-weares,
Desire, my love, my soule, my hope, hart, & life charmeth.

My hope becomes a friend to my desire,
My hart imbraceth Love, Love doth imbrace my hart,

Sitting alone, love bids me goe and write,
Reason plucks backe, commaunding me to stay,
Boasting that shee doth still direct the way,
Els senceles love could never once endite.

Love growing angry, vexed at the spleene,
And scorning Reasons maymed Argument,
Straight taxeth Reason, wanting to invent,
Where shee with Love conversing hath not beene.

Reason reproched with this coy disdaine,
Dispighteth Love, and laugheth at her folly,
And Love contemning Reasons reason wholy,
Thought her in weight too light by many a graine.

My love makes hote the fire whose heat is spent,
The water, moysture from my teares deriveth:
And my strong sighes, the ayres weake force reviveth.
This love, tears, sighes, maintaine each one his element.

The fire, unto my love, compare a painted fire,
The water, to my teares, as drops to Oceans be,
The ayre, unto my sighes, as Eagle to the flie,
The passions of dispaire, but joyes to my desire.

Onely my love is in the fire ingraved,
Onely my teares by Oceans may be gessed,
Onely my sighes are by the ayre expressed,

Ankor tryumph, upon whose blessed shore,
The sacred Muses solemnize thy name:
Where the Arcadian Swaines with rytes adore
Pandoras poesy, and her living fame.

Where first this jolly Sheepheard gan rehearse,
That heavenly worth, upon his Oaten reede,
Of earths great Queene: in Nectar-dewed verse,
Which none so wise that rightly can areede.

Nowe in conceite of his ambitious love,

WHEREIN HE INVOKES THE AID OF LOVE TO SING HER WORTHILY

Ah Love, assist my faint and foolish brain!
Pillar the style, sustain the lyric portal!
Help me to sing of her who is immortal,
A citizen of the celestial reign!
Permit, Lord, that my verses may attain
The reach of her proud praise (presumptuous mortal!)
Whose passing our poor world must now deplore till
The Golden Trumpet give her back again.
Love answers: " In myself and Heaven the best,
By converse pure and precept sage and holy,
All in her breathed of whom Death stands possessed.

WHEREIN HE CRAVES THE SWIFT RECOMPENSE OF HER INTERCESSION AS REWARD FOR HIS TRUE AND LONG LOVE

Lady, that blissfully with God may glitter
By virtue of surpassing charms and graces,
Thou art enthroned now in the golden places,
With more than pearls adorned, with purple fitter
A princes of the Lord: Ah, loveliest sitter
On the celestial dais, through Him that traces
The secret breast, regard my heart whose basis
Of love and faith my songs prove, my tears bitter.
Know, also, at the last how my heart only

WHEREIN THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD CAME AND WENT WITH LAURA

Amid a lovely thousand one I saw,
Whom seeing — and these shapes no fancy bred —
Instantly I was seized by amorous dread,
Then flamed with ardour, then was hushed with awe.
No fleck was in her, never mortal flaw,
No earthly happiness her hunger fed;
My soul, constrained to follow where she led,
Flinched at the blue pavilions of His law.
Alas, her sweep outsoared all wings, all cries,
And in a little space she sped from sight:
The very thought still finds me frozen numb.

WHEREIN HE HOPES SHE MAY REWARD THE OPEN PURITY AND PERMANENCE OF HIS LOVE

If honest love can merit recompense,
If pity still can do what she has done,
Mercy is mine, for clearer than the sun
My faith wins earth's and Laura's audience.
She feared me on a time; now confidence,
Though fearful to believe, believes me none
The less; where word or look before had won,
Now speaks my whole soul, stripped of all pretence.
And so I hope the high stars may resound
With her sighs doubling mine, on me the while
Compassion turns a tender dreamy smile.

THE SENSE FAINTS PICTURING HER

The high new wonder that enriched our days,
Dawned on our world, but would not dally there,
Heaven revealed, only to make men stare,
Then snatched back in its own bright world to blaze:
That to posterity I paint and praise
Her beauty is Love's will, Love's early snare;
Though now wit, time, pen, ink are weak to bear
The lovely burden and the long delays.
My rhymes pulse slowly for all Love's impelling;
I feel it, and whoever here and now,
By speech or poem will the truth avow,