What succour can I hope the Muse will send,
Whose drowsiness hath wronged the Muse’s friend?
What hope, Aurora, to propitiate thee,
Unless the Muse sing my apology?
O! in that morning of my shame, when I
Lay folded up in sleep’s captivity;
How at the sight didst thou draw back thine eyes,
Into thy modest veil! how didst thou rise
Twice dyed in thine own blushes, and didst run
To draw the curtains and awake the sun!
Who, rousing his illustrious tresses, came,
And seeing the loathed object, hid for shame
His head in thy fair bosom, and still hides
Me from his patronage; I pray, he chides;
And, pointing to dull Morpheus, bids me take
My own Apollo, try if I can make
His Lethe be my Helicon, and see
If Morpheus have a Muse to wait on me.
Hence ’tis my humble fancy finds no wings,
No nimble raptures, starts to heaven and brings
Enthusiastic flames, such as can give
Marrow to my plump genius, make it live
Dressed in the glorious madness of a muse,
Whose feet can walk the milky-way, and choose
Her starry throne; whose holy heats can warm
The grave, and hold up an exalted arm
To lift me from my lazy urn, and climb
Upon the stooped shoulders of old Time,
And trace eternity. But all is dead,
All these delicious hopes are buried
In the deep wrinkles of his angry brow,
Where mercy cannot find them; but, O thou
Bright lady of the morn, pity doth lie
So warm in thy soft breast, it cannot die;
Have mercy, then, and when he next doth rise,
O, meet the angry god, invade his eyes,
And stroke his radiant cheeks; one timely kiss
Will kill his anger, and revive my bliss.
So to the treasure of thy pearly dew
Thrice will I pay three tears, to show how true
My grief is; so my wakeful lay shall knock
At the oriental gates, and duly mock
The early lark’s shrill orisons to be
An anthem at the day’s nativity.
And the same rosy-fingered hand of thine,
That shuts night’s dying eyes, shall open mine.
But thou, faint god of sleep, forget that I
Was ever known to be thy votary.
No more my pillow shall thine altar be,
Nor will I offer any more to thee
Myself a melting sacrifice; I’m born
Again a fresh child of the buxom morn,
Heir of the sun’s first beams; why threat’st thou so?
Why dost thou shake thy leaden sceptre? Go,
Bestow thy poppy upon wakeful woe,
Sickness and sorrow, whose pale lids ne’er know
Thy downy finger dwell upon their eyes;
Shut in their tears, shut out their miseries.
LOVE’S HOROSCOPE
Love, brave Virtue’s younger brother,
Erst hath made my heart a mother.
She consults the anxious spheres,
To calculate her young son’s years;
She asks if sad or saving powers
Gave omen to his infant hours;
She asks each star that then stood by
If poor Love shall live or die.
Ah, my heart, is that the way?
Are these the beams that rule thy day?
Thou know’st a face in whose each look
Beauty lays ope Love’s fortune-book,
On whose fair revolutions wait
The obsequious motions of Love’s fate.
Ah, my heart! her eyes and she
Have taught thee new astrology.
Howe’er Love’s native hours were set,
Whatever starry synod met,
’Tis in the mercy of her eye,
If poor Love shall live or die.
If those sharp rays, putting on
Points of death, bid Love be gone;
Though the heavens in council sat
To crown an uncontrolled fate;
Though their best aspects twined upon
The kindest constellation,
Cast amorous glances on his birth,
And whispered the confederate earth
To pave his paths with all the good
That warms the bed of youth and blood:—
Love has no plea against her eye;
Beauty frowns, and Love must die.
But if her milder influence move,
And gild the hopes of humble Love;—
Though heaven’s inauspicious eye
Lay black on Love’s nativity;
Though every diamond in Jove’s crown
Fixed his forehead to a frown;—
Her eye a strong appeal can give,
Beauty smiles, and Love shall live.
O, if Love shall live, O where,
But in her eye, or in her ear,
In her breast, or in her breath,
Shall I hide poor Love from death?
For in the life aught else can give,
Love shall die, although he live.
Or, if Love shall die, O where,
But in her eye, or in her ear,
In her breath, or in her breast,
Shall I build his funeral nest?
While Love shall thus entombed lie,
Love shall live, although he die!
ON MR. G. HERBERT’S BOOK
Entitled, ‘The Temple of Sacred Poems,’ sent to a Gentlewoman