Privy-Love for My Landlady

Here costive many minutes did I strain,
Still squeezing, sweating, swearing, all in vain;
When lo! who should pop by but mother Masters,
At whose bewitching look soon stubborn arse stirs.
No more my wanton wit shall whip thy wife,
Dear, doting Dick, for O! she saved my life.

True Love

Her love is true I know,
Much more true
Than angel's love;
For angels love in heaven
Where a thousand harps
Are playing.

She loves in a tenement
Where the only music
She hears
Is the cry of street car brakes
And the toot of automobile horns
And the drip of a kitchen spigot
All day.
Her love is true I know.

To a Little Girl

Her eyes are like forget-me-nots,
— So loving, kind and true;
Her lips are like a pink sea-shell
— Just as the sun shines through;

Her hair is like the waving grain
— In summer's golden light;
And, best of all, her little soul
— Is, like a lily, white.

Henceforth I will nott sett my love

Henceforth I will nott sett my love
on other then the Contrye lasse
For in the Courte I see and prove
fancye is brittle as the glasse
The love bestowed on the greate
ys ever full of toile and cares
Subject still to frowne and freate
with sugred bayts in suttle snares
In good olde tymes ytt was the guyse
to shewe things in their proper kinde
Love painted owte in nakede wise
to shewe his playne and single mynde
Butt since into the Courte hee came
infected with a braver stile

Loves Heretick

He whose active thoughts disdain
To be Captive to one foe,
And would break his single chain
Or else more would undergo;
Let him learn the art of me,
By new bondage to be free.

What tyrannick Mistresse dare
To one beauty love confine,
Who unbounded as the aire
All may court but none decline?
Why should we the Heart deny
As many objects as the Eye?

Wheresoe're I turn or move

After Death in Arabia

He who died at Azan sends
This to comfort all his friends:

Faithful friends! It lies, I know,
Pale and white and cold as snow:
And ye say, " Abdallah's dead! "
Weeping at the feet and head.
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your sighs and prayers;
Yet I smile and whisper this:
" I am not the thing you kiss;
Cease your tears, and let it lie;
It was mine — it is not I. "

Sweet friends! what the women lave
For its last bed of the grave,
Is a tent which I am quitting,

Asleep

He knelt beside her pillow, in the dead watch of the night,
And he heard her gentle breathing, but her face was still and white,
And on her poor, wan cheek a tear told how the heart can weep,
And he said, “My love was weary—God bless her! she 's asleep.”

He knelt beside her gravestone in the shuddering autumn night,
And he heard the dry grass rustle, and his face was thin and white,
And through his heart the tremor ran of grief that cannot weep,
And he said, “My love was weary—God bless her! she 's asleep.”

The Broken Heart

He is stark mad, who ever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say,
I saw a flask of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come!
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;
They come to us, but us Love draws,
He swallows us, and never chaws:

Another. In Defense of Their Inconstancy. A Song

Hang up those dull, and envious fools
That talk abroad of woman's change,
We were not bred to sit on stools,
Our proper virtue is to range:
Take that away, you take our lives,
We are no women then, but wives.

Such as in valour would excel
Do change, though man, and often fight,
Which we in love must do as well,
If ever we will love aright.
The frequent varying of the deed,
Is that which doth perfection breed.

Nor is't inconstancy to change
For what is better, or to make

Epilogue

Have I spoken too much or not enough of love?
Who can tell?

But we who do not drug ourselves with lies
Know, with how deep a pathos, that we have
Only the warmth and beauty of this life
Before the blankness of the unending gloom.
Here for a little while we see the sun
And smell the grape-vines on the terraced hills,
And sing and weep, fight, starve and feast, and love
Lips and soft breasts too sweet for innocence.
And in this little glow of mortal life—
Faint as one candle in a large cold room—

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