UPON MY NOBLE FRIEND RICHARD LOVELACE, ESQ., HIS BEING IN HOLLAND. AN INVITATION.
Come, Adonis, come again;
What distaste could drive thee hence,
Where so much delight did reign,
Sateing ev'n the soul of sense?
And though thou unkind hast prov'd,
Never youth was more belov'd.
Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,
For Venus brooks not thy delay.
Wert thou sated with the spoil
Of so many virgin hearts,
And therefore didst change thy soil,
To seek fresh in other parts?
Dangers wait on foreign game;
We have deer more sound and tame.
Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,
For Venus brooks not thy delay.
Phillis, fed with thy delights,
In thy absence pines away;
And love, too, hath lost his rites,
Not one lass keeps holiday.
They have changed their mirth for cares,
And do onely sigh thy airs.
Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,
For Venus brooks not thy delay.
Elpine, in whose sager looks
Thou wert wont to take delight,
Hath forsook his drink and books,
'Cause he can't enjoy thy sight:
He hath laid his learning by,
'Cause his wit wants company.
Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,
For friendship brooks not thy delay.
All the swains that once did use
To converse with Love and thee,
In the language of thy Muse,
Have forgot Love's deity:
They deny to write a line,
And do only talk of thine.
Then, lov'd Adonis, come away,
For friendship brooks not thy delay.
By thy sweet Althea's voice,
We conjure thee to return;
Or we'll rob thee of that choice,
In whose flames each heart would burn:
That inspir'd by her and sack,
Such company we will not lack:
That poets in the age to come,
Shall write of our Elisium.
<2.9> Peter, or rather PETRE House, in Aldersgate Street, belonged at one time to the antient family by whose name it was known. The third Lord Petre, dying in 1638, left it, with other possessions in and about the city of London, to his son William. (Collins's PEERAGE, by Brydges, vii. 10, 11.) When Lovelace was committed to Peter House, and probably long before (MERCURIUS RUSTICUS, ed. 1685, pp. 76-79), this mansion was used as a house of detention for political prisoners; but in Ward's DIARY (ed. Severn, p. 167), there is the following entry (like almost all Ward's entries, unluckily without date):—"My Lord Peters is an Essex man; hee hath a house in Aldersgate Street, wherein lives the Marquis of Dorchester:" implying that at that period (perhaps about 1660), the premises still belonged to the Petre family, though temporarily let to Lord Dorchester. Another celebrated house in the same street was London House, which continued for some time to be the town residence of the Bishops of London. When it had ceased to be an episcopal abode, it was adapted to the purposes of an ordinary dwelling, and, among the occupants, at a somewhat later period, was Tom Rawlinson, the great book-collector. See Stow, ed. 1720, ii. lib. iii. p. 121.
<2.10> How different was the conduct, under similar circumstances, of the lady whom Charles Gerbier commemorates in his ELOGIUM HEROINUM, 1651, p. 127. "Democion, the Athenian virgin," he tells us, "hearing that Leosthenes, to whom she was contracted, was slain in the wars, she killed herself; but before her death she thus reasoned with herself: 'Although my body is untoucht, yet should I fall into the imbraces of another, I should but deceive the second, since I am still married to the former in my heart.'"
<2.11> Wood's story about LUCASTA having been a Lucy Sacheverell, "a lady of great beauty and fortune," may reasonably be doubted. Lucasta, whoever she was, seems to have belonged to Kent; the SACHEVERELLS were not a Kentish family. Besides, the corruption of Lucy Sacheverell into Lucasta is not very obvious, and rather violent; and the probability is that the author of the ATHENAE was misled by his informant on this occasion. The plate etched by Lely and engraved by Faithorne, which is found in the second part of LUCASTA, 1659, can scarcely be regarded as a portrait; it was, in all likelihood, a mere fancy sketch, and we are not perhaps far from the truth in our surmise that the artist was nearly, if not quite, as much in the dark as to who Lucasta was, as we are ourselves at the present day.