"LOVE WHO WILL, FOR I'LL LOVE NONE"
Love who will, for I'll love none,
There's fools enough beside me:
Yet if each woman have not one,
Come to me where I hide me,
And if she can the place attain,
For once I'll be her fool again.
It is an easy place to find,
And women sure should know it;
Yet thither serves not every wind,
Nor many men can show it:
It is the storehouse, where doth lie
All woman's truth and constancy.
If the journey be so long,
No woman will adventer;
But dreading her weak vessel's wrong,
The voyage will not enter:
Then may she sigh and lie alone,
In love with all, yet loved of none.
William Browne [1591-1643]
VALERIUS ON WOMEN
She that denies me I would have;
Who craves me I despise:
Venus hath power to rule mine heart,
But not to please mine eyes.
Temptations offered I still scorn;
Denied, I cling them still;
I'll neither glut mine appetite,
Nor seek to starve my will.
Diana, double-clothed, offends;
So Venus, naked quite:
The last begets a surfeit, and
The other no delight.