When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admirèd guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finished love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move;
When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arriv'd, a new admired guest,
The beauteous spirits do engirt thee round,
White Iope, blithe Helen, and the rest,
To hear the stories of thy finish'd love
From that smooth tongue whose music hell can move;
Unto the boundless Ocean of thy beauty
Runs this poor river, charged with streams of zeal:
Returning thee the tribute of my duty,
Which here my love, my youth, my plaints reveal.
Here I unclasp the book of my charged soul,
Where I have cast th'accounts of all my care:
Here have I summed my sighs, here I enroll
How they were spent for thee; look what they are.
Look on the dear expenses of my youth,
And see how just I reckon with thine eyes:
Examine well thy beauty with my truth,
And cross my cares ere greater sum arise.
Go wailing verse, the infants of my love,
Minerva-like, brought forth without a Mother:
Present the image of the cares I prove,
Witness your Father’s grief exceeds all other.
Sigh out a story of her cruel deeds,
With interrupted accents of despair:
A monument that whosoever reads,
May justly praise, and blame my loveless Fair.
Say her disdain hath dried up my blood,
And starved you, in succours still denying:
Press to her eyes, importune me some good;
Waken her sleeping pity with your crying.
But love whilst that thou mayst be loved again,
Now whilst thy May hath filed thy lap with flowers,
Now whilst thy beauty bears without a stain,
Now use the summer smiles, ere winter lowers.
And whilst thou spread’st unto the rising sun
The fairest flower that ever saw the light,
Now joy thy time before thy sweet be done,
And, Delia, think thy morning must have night,
And that thy brightness sets at length to west,
When thou wilt close up that which now thou shew’st;
And think the same becomes they fading best
When men shall find thy flower, thy glory, pass,
And thou with careful brow sitting alone
Received hast this message from thy glass,
That tells thee truth and says that all is gone:
Fresh shalt thou see in me the wounds thou madest,
Though spent thy flame, in me the heat remaining;
I that have lov'd thee thus before thou fadest,
My faith shall wax when thou art in thy waning.
The world shall find this miracle in me,
That fire can burn when all the matter's spent;
Then what my faith hath been thyself shall see,
Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born:
Relieve my languish, and restore the light,
With dark forgetting of my cares, return;
And let the day be time enough to mourn
The shipwreck of my ill-adventur'd youth:
Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,
Without the torment of the night's untruth.
Cease dreams, th'imagery of our day-desires,
To model forth the passions of the morrow;
Never let rising sun approve you liars,
To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.
Let others sing of knights and paladins
In aged accents and untimely words;
Paint shadows in imaginary lines
Which well the reach of their high wits records:
But I must sing of thee, and those fair eyes
Authentic shall my verse in time to come,
When yet th'unborn shall say, “Lo where she lies
Whose beauty made him speak that else was dumb. ”
These are the arks, the trophies I erect,
That fortify thy name against old age;
And these thy sacred virtues must protect
Against the dark, and time's consuming rage.
Fair is my love, and cruel as she's fair:
Her brow shades frowns although her eyes are sunny,
Her smiles are lightning though her pride despair,
And her disdains are gall, her favours honey;
A modest maid, deck'd with a blush of honour,
Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love,
The wonder of all eyes that look upon her:
Sacred on earth, design'd a saint above.
Chastity and beauty, which were deadly foes,
Live reconciled friends within her brow;
And had she pity to conjoin with those,
Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoyed, it sighting cries,
Heigh ho!
Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, not full, nor fasting.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoyed, it sighing cries,
Heigh ho!
