To His Mistress
Choose me your Valentine;
Next, let us marry;
Love to the death will pine
If we long tarry.
Promise and keep your vows.
Or vow ye never;
Love's doctrine disallows
Troth-breakers ever.
You have broke promise twice,
Dear, to undo me;
If you prove faithless thrice,
None then will woo ye.
—Robert Herrick
The Author's Resolution in a Sonnet
Shall I, wasting in despaire
Dye, because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
Cause anothers Rosie are?
Be she fairer than the Day
Or the flowry Meads in May,
If she thinke not well of me,
What care I how faire she be?
Shall a woman's Vertues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her well deservings knowne
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that Goodness blest
Which may merit name of best:
If she be not such to me,
What care I how good she be?
Cause her fortunes seem too high
Shall I play the fool and die?
She that bears a Noble mind,
If not outward helpes she find,
Think that with them he wold do,
That without them dares her woe.
And unlesse that Minde I see
What care I how great she be?
Great, or Good, or Kind, or Faire,
I will ne're the more despaire:
If she love me (this believe)
I will Die ere she shall grieve,
If she slight me when I woe,
I can scorne and let her goe,
For if she be not for me
What care I for whom she be?
—George Wither