Wert thou yet fairer than thou art,
(Which lies not in the power of art,)
Or hadst thou in thine eyes more darts
Than ever Cupid shot at hearts;
Yet if they were not thrown at me,5
I would not cast a thought on thee.
I’d rather marry a disease,
Than court the thing I cannot please:
She that will cherish my desires
Must meet my flames with equal fires.10
What pleasure is there in a kiss,
To him that doubts the heart’s not his?
I love thee not because thou’rt fair,
Softer than down, smoother than air;
Nor for the Cupids that do lie15
In either corner of thine eye.
Wouldst thou then know what it might be?
’Tis I love you, ’cause you love me.
[58:2.] P. 68, line 8. ‘So’: 1647, 1651.
[59:1.] The Relapse (p. 69)
Entitled simply ‘Song’ in 1647.
[59:2.] P. 69, line 5. ‘Blind and impious’: 1647.
[59:3.] P. 69, line 7. ‘Fall’: 1657; in the earlier versions ‘name,’ caught up by the compositor, in error, from the succeeding line. But the 1647 copy of Stanley in the Bodleian Library, which belonged to William Fairfax, has ‘name’ erased, and ‘fall’ written, in a seventeenth-century hand, above it.