Short Poems

When Arria to her Pætus had bequeath'd
The Sword, in her chast bosome newly sheath'd:
Trust mee (quoth shee) My owne wound feeles no smart;
Tis thine (my Pætus) grieves and kills my heart.

That I reckon as best which renders it easy to all men
Good to think, and yet forces a moral on none.

Let all the earth unite
With all who dwell in light,
To praise our God with one accord;
His noble deeds disclose
With ev'ry breath that flows;
Let ev'ry creature praise the Lord!

Sweet thoughts, the food on which I feeding sterve;
Sweet tears, the drink that more augments my thirst;
Sweet eyes, the stars by which my course doth swerve;
Sweet hope, my death, which wast my life at first;
Sweet thoughts, sweet tears, sweet hope, sweet eyes
How chance that death in sweetness lies?

“Swallows to the loggia! to the garden, roses!”
He speaks, and the rough hedge at his sweet word
bursts into bloom, and the air resounds with wings.
Other the wise one could, this he preferred;
content, if for him earth smells, for him sky sings:
his envoys to his native East he brings,
the crown he weaves on golden head reposes.

To wish, yet know our wishes vain,
And seek whom we despair to gain,
The arts, by which undone, to prize,
And love the wounds, by which he dies;
The folly of this conduct prove,
How short the answer is—I love!

Oh Thou! whose sacred Light in Darkness beam'd!
Whose Grace supports us—and whose Love redeem'd!—
Complete within my soul thy blest design,
And make my struggling heart for ever Thine?

The parliament the first of June will sit,
Some saye, but is the yeere of God to it?
Fourtie; no, rather make it fourtie one,
And one to fourty but yee then haue none.

Hard laws of mortall life!
To which made thrales, we come without consent,
Like tapers lighted to be early spent:
Our griefes are alwaies rife,
When joyes but halting march, and swiftly fly
Like shadows in the eye:
The shadow doth not yeeld unto the sun,
But joyes and life do waste even when begun.

Flouds cannot quench my flames; ah! in this well
I burne, not drowne, for what I cannot tell.