LOVE.
What thing is Love, which naught can countervail?
Naught save itself, ev'n such a thing is Love.
And worldly wealth in worth as far doth fail,
As lowest earth doth yield to heav'n above.
Divine is love, and scorneth worldly pelf,
And can be bought with nothing but with self.
SIR W. RALEIGH.
If Love be life, I long to die,
Live they that list for me:
And he that gains the most thereby,
A fool at least shall be.
But he that feels the sorest fits
'Scapes with no less than loss of wits.
Unhappy life they gain,
Which love do entertain.
SIR W. RALEIGH.
If all the world and Love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pleasures might my passion move,
To live with thee, and be my love.
But fading flowers in every field,
To winter floods their treasures yield;
A honey'd tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.
SIR W. RALEIGH.—Answer to Marlowe's "Come Live," &c.
Passions are likened best to floods and streams;
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb,
So, when affections yield discourse, it seems
The bottom is but shallow whence they come:
They that are rich in words must needs discover
They are but poor in that which makes a lover.
SIR W. RALEIGH.
—— Love is nature's second sun
Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.
And, as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,
Are giv'n in vain to men; so, without love
All beauties bred in woman are in vain,
All virtues born in men lie buried;
For love informs them as the sun doth colours.
And as the sun reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers,
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts,
Brave resolution, and divine discourse.
O! 'tis the paradise! the heaven of earth!
CHAPMAN.
Ladies, though to your conquering eyes
Love owes its chiefest victories,
And borrows those bright arms from you
With which he does the world subdue;
Yet you yourselves are not above
The empire nor the griefs of love.
Then wrack not lovers with disdain,
Lest love on you revenge their pain;
You are not free, because you're fair,
The boy did not his mother spare:
Though beauty be a killing dart,
It is no armour for the heart.
ETHERIDGE.
Come, little infant, love me now.
While thine unsuspected years
Clear thine aged father's brow
From cold jealousy and fears.
Pretty, surely, 'twere to see
By young Love old Time beguil'd;
While our sportings are as free
As the muse's with the child.
Now then, love me; Time may take
Thee before my time away;
Of this need we'll virtue make
And learn love before we may.
So we win of doubtful fate;
And if good to us she meant,
We that good shall antedate.
Or, if ill, that ill prevent.
MARVELL.
Hear ye virgins, and I'll teach,
What the times of old did preach:
Rosamond was in a tower
Kept, as Danae, in a tower;
But yet love, who subtle is,
Crept to that, and came to this:
Be ye lock'd up like to these,
Or the rich Hesperides:
Or those babies in your eyes,
In their crystal nurseries;
Notwithstanding love will win,
Or else force a passage in;
And as coy be as you can.
Gifts will get ye, or the man.
HERRICK.
Great Venus, queen of beauty and of grace.
The joy of gods and men, that under sky
Dost fairest shine, and most adorn thy place,
That with thy smiling look dost pacify
The raging seas, and mak'st the storms to fly:
Thee, goddess, thee the winds, the clouds do fear,
And when thou spreadst thy mantle forth on high,
The waters play, and pleasant lands appear,
And heaven laughs, and all the world shows joyous chear.
—All the world by thee at first was made,
And daily yet thou dost the same repair,
Ne ought on earth that merry is and glad,
Ne ought on earth that lovely is and fair,
But thou the same for pleasure didst prepare.
Thou art the root of all that joyous is,
Great God of men and women, queen of th' air,
Mother of laughter, and well-spring of bliss,
O graunt that of my love at last I may not miss.
Fairy Queen.—SPENSER.
As men tormented with a burning fever,
Dream that with drink they 'suage their grievous thirst,
But when they wake they find their thirst persever,
And to be greater than it was at first;
So she whose thoughts from love sleep could not sever,
Dreamt of that thing for which she 'wake did thirst;
But waking, felt and found it as before,
Her hope still less, and her desire still more.
SIR J. HARRINGTON.
—— Love is only root and crop of care,
The body's foe, the heart's annoy and cause of pleasures rare
The sickness of the mind and fountain of unrest,
The gulf of guile, the pit of pain, of grief the hollow chest;
A fiery frost, a flame that frozen is with ice,
A heavy burden light to bear, a virtue fraught with vice;
It is a worldlike peace, a safety seeing dread,
A deep despair annexed to hope, a fancy that is fed,
Sweet poison for his taste, a port Charybdis like,
A Scylla for his safety, though a lion that is meek.
TURBERVILLE.