A Divine Mistris

In natures peeces still I see
Some errour, that might mended bee;
Something my wish could still remove,
Alter or adde; but my faire love
Was fram'd by hands farre more divine;
For she hath every beauteous line:
Yet I had beene farre happier,
Had Nature that made me, made her;
Then likenes, might (that love creates)
Have made her love what now she hates:
Yet I confesse I cannot spare,
From her just shape the smallest haire;
Nor need I beg from all the store
Of heaven, for her one beautie more:

The Child Scribbles

My fault, my greatest fault,
O sea-eyed princess,
was to love you
as a child loves.
(The greatest lovers,
after all, are children)

My first mistake
(and not my last)
was to live
in the state of wonder
ready to be amazed
by the simple span
of night and day,

and ready for every woman
I loved to break me
into a thousand pieces to make
me an open city,
and to leave me behind her
as dust.
My weakness was to see
the world with the logic of a child.

Improvisation

One last kiss … then with tender eyes we went
Forth from the shadowy house of scattered light;
As children startled by a gruesome sight,
We wondered what the dim black waggon meant.

“A girl is dead,” we heard, and this was all;
But in my sleepless dreams she flutters past,
Like some unknown lost sister, found at last
Beyond the locked gate of a silent wall.

Had she been loved as I was loved, and died?
(Once in his arms I thought my heart would break!)
Could she not bear the kisses that I bore?

Euclia's Hymn

So Love, emergent out of chaos, brought
The world to light!
And gently moving on the waters, wrought
All form to sight!
Love's appetite
Did beauty first excite,
And left imprinted in the air
Those signatures of good and fair,
CHORUS

Which since have flowed, flowed forth upon the sense,
To wonder first, and then to excellence,
By virtue of divine intelligence!

The Ingemination
And Neptune too
Shows what his waves can do,
To call the muses all to play
And sing the birth of Venus' day,
CHORUS

The Remedy

Look at my heart: see how it bleeds with tears,
Love's wound still open all these weary years.
Help me, dear maid, for I am sore distrest;
No surgeon's hand can lull my pain to rest.
I am poor Telephus; you Achilles be
And heal the wound your beauty made in me.

Authorities for Marcus His Hate-full Love

P HAUORINUS vs'd to praise the quartaine-feauer;
Ould, beyond the moone would nutts commend;
Virgill, a gnatt, and Homer, honor'd euer
The fight of froggs, which do the most offend:
If these pure Wits most praise what most abhorre
What maruell ist though Marcus praise his whore.

The Author Loving These Homely Meats

If there were, oh! an Hellespont of cream
Between us, milk-white mistress, I would swim
To you, to show to both my love's extreme,
Leander-like,--yea! dive from brim to brim.
But met I with a buttered pippin-pie
Floating upon 't, that would I make my boat
To waft me to you without jeopardy,
Though sea-sick I might be while it did float.
Yet if a storm should rise, by night or day,
Of sugar-snows and hail of caraways,
Then, if I found a pancake in my way,
It like a plank should bring me to your kays;

Of Caesars Love to Poets

The Romaine Publius and Laberins,
(Two poets whome great Cæsar fauorèd).
Their skill that Cæsar held most serious
Though by most Cæsars now disfauourèd:
Why should not poetry please these great Kesars?
It is because those Kesars are no Cæsars.

To One Who Might Have Borne a Message

Had I known that you were going
I would have given you messages for her,
Now two years dead,
Whom I shall always love.

As it is, should she entreat you how it goes with me,
You must reply: as well as with most, you fancy;
That I love easily, and pass the time.

And she will not know how all day long between
My life and me her shadow intervenes,
A young thin girl,
Wearing a white skirt and a purple sweater
And a narrow pale blue ribbon about her hair.

I used to say to her, “I love you

The Scornful Reproved

There is none, no none but I,
None but I so full of woe,
That I cannot choose but die,
Or beg physic from my foe.

Now what hopes she shall be moved
To revive my hopes forlorn?
She that loves for to be loved,
Yet pays her lover's hopes with scorn.

Whose deserts inflame desire,
Whose disdain strikes comfort dead,
In whose eyes lives love's fire,—
From whose heart all love is fled.

Lovely eyes, and loveless heart,
Why do you disagree?
How can sweetness cause such smart,


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