Who held plurality of loves no crime!
But even then he looks forward, not with cynicism, to a time when he
Shall not so easily be to change dispos’d,
Nor to the arts of several eyes obeying;
But beauty with true worth securely weighing,
Which, being found assembled in some one,
We’ll love her ever, and love her alone.
By the time he writes The Ecstasy the victim of the body has become the protesting victim of the soul. He cries out against a love that is merely an ecstatic friendship:
But O alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?