PART V LOVE WAKE NOW, MY LOVE WAKE now, my Love, awake! for it is time: And Phoebus gins to shew his glorious hed. Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies, And carroll of Love's praise: The merry larke hir mattins sings aloft; The thrush replyes; the mavis descant playes; The ouzell shrills; the ruddock warbles soft; So goodly all agree, with sweet consent, To this dayes meriment. Ah! my deere Love, why doe ye sleepe thus long, For they of joy and pleasance to you sing, That all the woods them answer, and theyr eccho ring. EDMUND SPENSER (Epithalamion). TRUE LOVE LET me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments: love is not love Or bends with the remover to remove; O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. I never writ, nor no man ever loved. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. MY TRUE-LOVE HATH MY HEART My true-love hath my heart, and I have his, I cherish his because in me it bides: SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. WHEN IN DISGRACE WITH FORTUNE WHEN, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, DRINK TO ME ONLY WITH THINE EYES DRINK to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honouring thee It could not wither'd be ; But thou thereon didst only breathe And sent'st it back to me; Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, SONG AT setting day and rising morn, BEN JONSON. Where first thou kindly told me By greenwood shaw or fountain; A GIRDLE ALLAN RAMSAY. THAT which her slender waist confined It was my heaven's extremest sphere, EDMUND WALLER. THE SHEPHERD'S LOVE . HERE she was wont to go! and here! and here! Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk! BEN JONSON. TO ALTHEA, FROM PRISON Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at my grates; When flowing cups pass swiftly round Our careless heads with roses crown'd, Fishes that tipple in the deep When, linnet-like confinèd, I The mercy, sweetness, majesty, When I shall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, The enlarged winds, that curl the flood, Know no such liberty. Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage; RICHARD LOVELACE. A CELEBRATION OF CHARIS SEE the chariot at hand here of Love, Each that draws is a swan or a dove, And well the car Love guideth. As she goes all hearts do duty And, enamour'd, do wish, so they might That they still were to run by her side, Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. Do but look on her eyes, they do light And from her arch'd brows such a grace As alone there triumphs to the life All the gain, all the good, of the elements' strife. Have you seen but a bright lily grow Before rude hands have touch'd it? Have you felt the wool of beaver ? Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier? Or have tasted the bag of the bee? O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she! BEN JONSON. CUPID AND CAMPASPE CUPID and my Campaspe play'd At cards for kisses; Cupid paid. Growing on 's cheek, but none knows how; JOHN LYLY. |