Poetry

scrupulous; only thou
O free fair city, mayst thyself allow
To anyone. In Flanders, who can tell
Whether the master press, or men rebel?
Only we know, that which most idiots say,
They must bear blows which come to part the fray.
France in her lunatic giddiness did hate
Ever our men, yea, and our God, of late;
Yet she relies upon our angels well,
Which ne’er return, no more than they which fell.
Sick Ireland is with a strange war possest,
Like to an ague, now raging, now at rest,
Which time will cure; yet it must do her good
If she were purg’d, and her head-vein let blood;
And Midas joys our Spanish journeys give;
We touch all gold, but find no food to live;
And I should be in that hot parching clime
To dust and ashes turned before my time.
To mew me in a ship is to enthral
Me in a prison that were like to fall;
Or in a cloister, save that there men dwell
In a calm heaven, here in a swaying hell.
Long voyages are long consumptions,
And ships are carts for executions;
Yea, they are deaths; is ’t not all one to fly
Into another world, as ’tis to die?
Here let me war; in these arms let me lie:
Here let me parley, batter, bleed, and die.
Thine arms imprison me, and my arms thee;
Thy heart thy ransom is; take mine for me.
Other men war, that they their rest may gain,
But we will rest that we may fight again.
Those wars th’ ignorant, these th’ experienced love;
There we are always under, here above.
There engines far off breed a just true fear;
Near thrusts, pikes, stabs, yea, bullets, hurt not here.
There lies are wrongs; here safe uprightly lie.
There men kill men; we’ll make one by and by.
Thou nothing, I not half so much shall do
In those wars, as they may which from us two
Shall spring. Thousands we see which travel not
To war, but stay, swords, arms, and shot
To make at home; and shall not I do then
More glorious service, staying to make men?

Heroical Epistle

Sappho to Philaenis

Where is that holy fire, which verse is said
To have? Is that enchanting force decay’d?
Verse that draws nature’s works from nature’s law,
Thee, her best work, to her work cannot draw.
Have my tears quench’d my old poetic fire?
Why quench’d they not as well that of desire?
Thoughts, my mind’s creatures, often are with thee,
But I, their maker, want their liberty.
Only thine image in my heart doth sit,
But that is wax, and fires environ it.
My fires have driven, thine have drawn it hence;
And I am robb’d of picture, heart, and sense.
Dwells with me still mine irksome memory,
Which, both to keep and lose, grieves equally.
That tells me how fair thou art; thou art so fair
As gods, when gods to thee I do compare,
Are graced thereby; and to make blind men see,
What things gods are, I say they’re like to thee.
For if we justly call each silly man
A little world, what shall we call thee then?
Thou art not soft, and clear, and straight, and fair,
As down, as stars, cedars, and lilies are;
But thy right hand, and cheek, and eye, only
Are like thy other hand, and cheek, and eye.
Such was my Phao awhile, but shall be never,
As thou wast, art, and O, mayst thou be ever.
Here lovers swear in their idolatry,
That I am such; but grief discolours me.
And yet I grieve the less, lest grief remove
My beauty, and make me unworthy of thy love.
Plays some soft boy with thee, O, there wants yet
A mutual feeling which should sweeten it.
His chin, a thorny, hairy unevenness
Doth threaten, and some daily change possess.
Thy body is a natural paradise,
In whose self, unmanured, all pleasure lies,
Nor needs perfection; why shouldst thou then
Admit the tillage of a harsh rough man?
Men leave behind them that which their sin shows,
And are as thieves traced, which rob when it snows.
But of our dalliance no more signs there are,
Than fishes leave in streams, or birds in air;
And between us all sweetness may be had,
All, all that nature yields, or art can add.
My two lips, eyes, thighs, differ from thy two
But so, as thine from one another do,
And, O, no more; the likeness being such,
Why should they not alike in all parts touch?
Hand to strange hand, lip to lip none denies;
Why should they breast to breast, or thighs to thighs?
Likeness begets such strange self-flattery,
That touching myself all seems done to thee.
Myself I embrace, and mine own hands I kiss,
And amorously thank myself for this.
Me, in my glass, I call thee; but alas,
When I would kiss, tears dim mine eyes and glass.
O cure this loving madness, and restore
Me to thee, thee my half, my all, my more.
So may thy cheeks’ red outwear scarlet dye,
And their white, whiteness of the Galaxy;
So may thy mighty, amazing beauty move
Envy in all women, and in all men love;
And so be change and sickness far from thee,
As thou by coming near keep’st them from me.

Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs

An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine Being Married on St. Valentine’s Day

I

Hail Bishop Valentine, whose day this is;
All the air is thy diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners;
Thou marriest every year
The lyric lark, and the grave whispering dove,
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher;
Thou makest the blackbird speed as soon,
As doth the goldfinch, or the halcyon;
The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped,
And meets his wife, which brings her featherbed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine;
This day, which might inflame thyself, old Valentine.

II

Till now, thou warm’d’st with multiplying loves
Two larks, two sparrows, or two doves;
All that is nothing unto this;
For thou this day couplest two phoenixes;
Thou makst a taper see
What the sun never saw, and what the ark
—Which was of fowls and beasts the cage