Let not my hearse be vexed with mourning friends;
But let all lovers, rich in triumph, come
And with sweet pastimes grace my happy tomb:
And, Lesbia, close up thou my little light,
And crown with love my ever-during night.
THOMAS CAMPION
ENGLISH (1567-1620)
To Celia
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I’ll not look for wine.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
I sent thee late a rosy wreath,
Not so much honoring thee
As giving it a hope that there
It could not withered be;
But thou thereon didst only breathe,
And sent’st it back to me;
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear,
Not of itself but thee!
BEN JONSON
ENGLISH (1572-1637)
The Good-Morrow
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved: were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
What ever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none do slacken, none can die.
JOHN DONNE
ENGLISH (1572-1631)
The Sun Rising
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Thy beams so reverend and strong
Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long:
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me
Whether both th’ Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday
And thou shalt hear: All here in one bed lay.
She is all states, and all princes I:
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compar’d to this,
All honor’s mimic; all wealth alchemy.
Thou, sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere:
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.
JOHN DONNE
ENGLISH (1572-1631)
To His Mistress Going to Bed
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir’d with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone glistering,
But a far fairer world incompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace your self, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowry meads th’hill’s shadow steals.
Off with that wiry Coronet and show
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallow’d temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven’s angels us’d to be
Receiv’d by men; thou angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we eas’ly know,
By this these angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal’d. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a midwife, show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
Here is no penance, much less innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man?
JOHN DONNE
ENGLISH (1572-1631)
The Ecstasy
Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A pregnant bank swelled up, to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we two, one another’s best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm, which thence did spring
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string;
So to entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all our means to make us one,
And pictures on our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As ’twixt two equal armies Fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung ’twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay;
All day the same our postures were,
And we said nothing all the day.
If any, so by love refined
That he soul’s language understood,
And by good lo
ve were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex
(We said) and tell us what we love,
We see by this, it was not sex,
We see, we saw not what did move:
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love these mixed souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed, and made,
For the atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But, O alas! so long, so far
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though they are not we; we are
The intelligences, they the sphere.
We owe them thanks, because they thus
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their forces, sense, to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven’s influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can;
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot, which makes us man;
So must pure lovers’ souls descend
To affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies.
To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love revealed may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we’re to bodies gone.
JOHN DONNE
ENGLISH (1572-1631)
Song
Ask me no more where Jove bestows
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauties’ orient deep
These flowers as in their causes sleep.
Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love Heaven did prepare
These powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more where those stars light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit and there
Fixéd become, as in their sphere.
Ask me no more if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
THOMAS CAREW
ENGLISH (1595?-1645?)
Clothes Do but Cheat and Cozen Us
Away with silks, away with lawn,
I’ll have no scenes or curtains drawn:
Give me my mistress as she is,
Dress’d in her nak’t simplicities:
For as my heart, e’en so my eye
Is won with flesh, not drapery.
ROBERT HERRICK
ENGLISH (1591-1674)
To Anthea, Who May Command Him Any Thing
Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be:
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.
A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free,
As in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I’ll give to thee.
Bid that heart stay, and it will stay,
To honor thy decree:
Or bid it languish quite away,
And’t shall do so for thee.
Bid me to weep, and I will weep,
While I have eyes to see:
And having none, yet I will keep
A heart to weep for thee.
Bid me despair, and I’ll despair,
Under that cypress tree:
Or bid me die, and I will dare
E’en Death, to die for thee.
Thou art my life, my love, my heart,
The very eyes of me:
And hast command of every part,
To live and die for thee.
ROBERT HERRICK
ENGLISH (1591-1674)
The Fifth Ode of Horace, Book I
What slender youth bedew’d with liquid odours
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? for whom bindst thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in thy neatness? O how oft shall he
On faith and changed gods complain: and seas
Rough with black winds and storms
Unwonted shall admire:
Who now enjoys thee credulous, all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable
Hopes thee; of flattering gales
Unmindful. Hapless they
To whom thou untried seem’st fair. Me in my vow’d
Picture the sacred wall declares t’ have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern God of Sea.
JOHN MILTON
ENGLISH (1608-1674)
All my past Life is mine no more
All my past life is mine no more,
The flying hours are gone:
Like transitory dreams giv’n o’re,
Whose images are kept in store,
By memory alone.
The time that is to come is not,
How can it then be mine?
The present moment’s all my lot,
And that, as fast as it is got,
Phillis, is only thine.
Then talk not of inconstancy,
False hearts, and broken vows:
If I, by miracle, can be
This live-long minute true to thee,
’Tis all that Heav’n allows.
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
ENGLISH (1647-1680)
Why so pale and wan, fond lover
Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t win her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?
Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prithee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
Saying nothing do’t?
Prithee, why so mute?
Quit, quit for shame, this will not move;
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her;
The devil take her!
JOHN SUCKLING
ENGLISH (1609-1642)
To His Coy Mistress
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Should’st rubies find: I by the tide
Of
Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood;
And you should if you please refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow.
A hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze.
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingéd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor in thy marble vault shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now like amorous birds of prey
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
ANDREW MARVELL
ENGLISH (1621-1678)
The Prince of Love
How sweet I roamed from field to field,
And tasted all the summer’s pride,
’Till I the prince of love beheld,
Who in the sunny beams did glide!
He showed me lilies for my hair,
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair,
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
With sweet May dews my wings were wet,
And Phoebus fired my vocal rage;
He caught me in his silken net,
And shut me in his golden cage.
He loves to sit and hear me sing,
Then, laughing, sports and plays with me;
Then stretches out my golden wing,
And mocks my loss of liberty.