The seeds of treason choke up as they spring:
He acts the crime that gives it cherishing.
18. TWO THINGS ODIOUS.
Two of a thousand things are disallow'd:
A lying rich man, and a poor man proud.
19. TO HIS MISTRESSES.
Help me! help me! now I call
To my pretty witchcrafts all;
Old I am, and cannot do
That I was accustomed to.
Bring your magics, spells, and charms,
To enflesh my thighs and arms.
Is there no way to beget
In my limbs their former heat?
Æson had, as poets feign,
Baths that made him young again:
Find that medicine, if you can,
For your dry decrepit man
Who would fain his strength renew,
Were it but to pleasure you.
Æson, rejuvenated by Medea; see Ovid, Met. vii.
20. THE WOUNDED HEART.
Come bring your sampler, and with art
Draw in't a wounded heart
And dropping here and there:
Not that I think that any dart
Can make yours bleed a tear,
Or pierce it anywhere;
Yet do it to this end: that I
May by
This secret see,
Though you can make
That heart to bleed, yours ne'er will ache
For me.
21. NO LOATHSOMENESS IN LOVE.
What I fancy I approve,
No dislike there is in love.
Be my mistress short or tall,
And distorted therewithal:
Be she likewise one of those
That an acre hath of nose:
Be her forehead and her eyes
Full of incongruities:
Be her cheeks so shallow too
As to show her tongue wag through;
Be her lips ill hung or set,
And her grinders black as jet:
Has she thin hair, hath she none,
She's to me a paragon.