SWEET Spring, thou turn’st with all thy goodly train,
Thy head with flames, thy mantle bright with flow’rs:
The zephyrs curl the green locks of the plain,
The clouds for joy in pearls weep down their show’rs.
Thou turn’st, sweet youth, but ah! my pleasant hours
And happy days with thee come not again;
The sad memorials only of my pain
Do with thee turn, which turn my sweets in sours.
Thou art the same which still thou wast before,
Delicious, wanton, amiable, fair;
But she, whose breath embalm’d thy wholesome air,
Is gone—nor gold nor gems her can restore.
Neglected virtue, seasons go and come,
While thine forgot lie closèd in a tomb.
Spring Bereaved 3
ALEXIS, here she stay’d; among these pines,
Sweet hermitress, she did alone repair;
Here did she spread the treasure of her hair,
More rich than that brought from the Colchian mines.
She set her by these muskèd eglantines,
—The happy place the print seems yet to bear:
Her voice did sweeten here thy sugar’d lines,
To which winds, trees, beasts, birds, did lend their ear.
Me here she first perceived, and here a morn
Of bright carnations did o’erspread her face;
Here did she sigh, here first my hopes were born,
And I first got a pledge of promised grace:
But ah! what served it to be happy so?
Sith passèd pleasures double but new woe?
Her Passing
THE beauty and the life
Of life’s and beauty’s fairest paragon
—O tears! O grief!—hung at a feeble thread
To which pale Atropos had set her knife;
The soul with many a groan
Had left each outward part,
And now did take his last leave of the heart:
Naught else did want, save death, ev’n to be dead;
When the afflicted band about her bed,
Seeing so fair him come in lips, cheeks, eyes,
Cried, ‘Ah! and can Death enter Paradise?’
Inexorable
MY thoughts hold mortal strife;
I do detest my life,
And with lamenting cries
Peace to my soul to bring
Oft call that prince which here doth monarchise:
—But he, grim-grinning King,
Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise.
Late having deck’d with beauty’s rose his tomb,
Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.