Madness his sorrow, gout his cramp may he
Make, by but thinking who hath made them such:
And may he feel no touch

Of conscience, but of fame, and be

The world's whole sap is sunk:

Or may he for her virtue reverence
One, that hates him only for impotence,
And equal traitors be she and his sense.

May he dream treason, and believe that he
Meant to perform it, and confess, and die,
And no record tell why:

His sons, which none of his may be,
Inherit nothing but his infamy:

Or may he so long parasites have fed,

That he would fain be theirs, whom he hath bred, And at the last be circumcis'd for bread.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
For I am a very dead thing,

In whom love wrought new alchymy.
For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness:
He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death; things which art not.

All others from all things draw all that's good,
Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
I, by love's limbec, am the grave
Of all, that 's nothing. Oft a flood
Have we two wept, and so

Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
To be two chaoses, when he did show

Care to aught else; and often absences
Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
Were I a man, that I were one

I needs must know; I should prefer,
If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,

And love, all, all some properties invest.

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light, and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew:
You lovers, for whose sake the lesser Sun
At this time to the Goat is run
To fetch new lust, and give it you,
Enjoy your summer all,

Since she enjoys her long night's festival,
Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
This hour her vigil and her eve, since this
Both the year's and the day's deep midnight is.

WITCHCRAFT BY A PICTURE.

I FIX mine eye on thine, and there
Pity my picture burning in thine eye,
My picture drown'd in a transparent tear,
When I look lower, I espy;

Hadst thou the wicked skill,

By pictures made and marr'd, to kill;
How many ways might'st thou perform thy will!

But now I've drunk thy sweet salt tears,
And though thou pour more, I'll depart :
My picture vanished, vanish all fears,
That I can be endamag'd by that art:
Though thou retain of me

One picture more, yet that will be,
Being in thine own heart, from all malice free.

THE BAIT.

COME, live with me, and be my love, nd we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whisp'ring run,
Warm'd by thine eyes more than the Sun:
And there th' enamour'd fish will play,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou to be so seen art loath
By Sun or Moon, thou darken'st both;
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or winding net:

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest The bedded fish in banks out-wrest, Or curious traitors sleave silk flies, Bewitch poor fishes' wand'ring eyes:

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, For thou thyself art thine own bait; That fish, that is not catch'd thereby, Alas! is wiser far than I.

Who will believe me, if I swear

That I have had the plague a year?

Who would not laugh at me, if I should say, I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah! what a trifle is a heart,

If once into Love's bands it come! All other griefs allow a part

To other griefs, aud ask themselves but some. They come to us, but us Love draws,

He swallows us and never chaws:

By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die; He is the tyrant pike, and we the fry.

If 't were not so, what did become

Of my heart, when I first saw thee?

I brought a heart into the room,

But from the room I carried none with me:
If it had gone to thee, I know

Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me: but Love, alas,
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,

Nor any place be empty quite, Therefore I think my breast hath all

Those pieces still, though they do not unite: And now as broken glasses show A hundred lesser faces, so

My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, But after one such love can love no more.

THE APPARITION.

WHEN by thy scorn, O murd'ress, I am dead,
And thou shalt think thee free

Of all solicitation from me,

Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,

And thee feign'd vestal in worse arms shall see;
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,
And be, whose thou art, being tir'd before,
Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think
Thou call'st for more,

And in a false sleep even from thee shrink.
And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou
Bath'd in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie
A verier ghost than I;

What I will say, I will not tell thee now,

Lest that preserve thee: and since my love is spent,
I'd rather thou should'st painfully repent,
Than by my threatnings rest still innocent.

THE

BROKEN HEART.

HE is stark mad, whoever says
That he hath been in love an hour,

Yet not that love so soon decays,

But that it can ten in less space devour;

VALEDICTION

PORBIDDING MOURNING.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes,” and some say, “ No ;”

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move, 'T were profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' Earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Of absence, 'cause it doth remove The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so far refin'd,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,

Careless eyes, lips, and hands, to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two, Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Sach wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run, Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

THE

ECSTASY.

WHERE, like a pillow on a bed,

A pregnant bank swell'd up, to rest The violet's declining head,

Sat we on one another's breast.
Our hands were firmly cemented

By a fast balm, which thence did spring,
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one double string:
So to engraft our hands as yet

Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equal armies fate
Suspends uncertain victory,

Our souls (which, to advance our state,
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues lay,
All day the same our postures were,
And we said nothing all the day.
If any, so by love refin'd,

That he souls' language understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake, the same)
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part far purer than he came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex

(We said) and tell us what we love, We see by this, it was not sex,

We see, we saw not what did move : But as all several souls contain

Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this and that.
A single violet transplant,

The strength, the colour, and the size
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still and multiplies.
When love with one another so

Interanimates two souls,

That abler soul, which thence doth flow,

Defects of loveliness controls.

We then, who are this new soul, know,
Of what we are compos'd and made:
For the atoms, of which we grow,

Are soul, whom no change can invade.

But, O, alas! so long, so far

Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though not we, we are
Th' intelligences, they the spheres,
We owe them thanks because they thus
Did us to us at first convey,
Yielded their sense's force to us,

Nor are dross to us, but allay.

On man Heaven's influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air,
For soul into the soul may flow,

Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit

That subtle knot, which makes us man;
So must pure lovers' souls descend
T'affections and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies;
T'our bodies turn we then, and so
Weak men on love reveal'd may look ;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,

But yet the body is the book;
And if some lover, such as we,

Have heard this dialogue of one, Let him still mark us, he shall see

Small change, when we 're to bodies grown.

LOVE'S DEITY.

I LONG to talk with some old lover's ghost,!
Who dy'd before the god of love was born: [!
I cannot think that he, who then lov'd most,
Sunk so low, as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produc'd a destiny,
And that vice-nature custom lets it be;

I must love her that loves not me.

Sure they, which made him god, meant not so much,
Nor he in his young godhead practis'd it.

But when an even flame two hearts did touch,
His office was indulgently to fit
Actives to passives, correspondency
Only his subject was; it cannot be
Love, till I love her that loves me.

But every modern god will now extend
His vast prerogative as far as Jove,
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the god of love.
Oh, were we waken'd by this tyranny
Tungod this child again, it could not be
I should love her, who loves not me.

Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I
As though I felt the worst that Love could do?
Love may make me leave loving, or might try
A deeper plague, to make her love me too,
Which, since she loves before, I'm loath to see;
Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must be,
If she whom I love should love me.

LOVE'S DIET.

To what a cumbersome unwieldiness

And burthenous corpulence my love had grown; But that I did, to make it less,

And keep it in proportion,

Give it a diet, made it feed upon,
That which love worst endures, discretion.

Above one sigh a-day I allow'd him not,

Of which my fortune and my faults had part;
And if sometimes by stealth he got
A she-sigh from my mistress' heart,
And thought to feast on that, I let him see
'T was neither very sound, nor meant to me.

If he wrung from me a tear, I brin'd it so
With scorn or shame, that him it nourish'd not;
If he suck'd her's, I let him know
'Twas not a tear which he bad got.
His drink was counterfeit, as was his meat;
Her eyes, which roll towards all, weep not, but sweat.

Whatever she would dictate, I writ that,
But burnt my letters, which she writ to me;
And if that favour made him fat,
I said, "If any title be
Convey'd by this, ah! what doth it avail
To be the fortieth man in an entail?"

Thus I reclaim'd my buzzard love to fly

At what, and when, and how, and where I chose; Now negligent of sport I lie,

And now, as other falc'ners use,

I spring a mistress, swear, write, sigh, and weep,. And the game kill'd, or lost, go talk or sleep.

I give my reputation to those

Which were my friends; mine industry to foes:
To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness;
My sickness to physicians, or excess;

To Nature all that I in rhyme have writ;
And to my company my wit.

Thou, Love, by making me adore
Her, who begot this love in me before,
Taught'st me to make, as though I gave, when I do
but restore.

To him, for whom the passing-bell next tolls,
I give my physic books; my written rolls
Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give:
My brazen medals, unto them which live
In want of bread; to them, which pass among
All foreigners, mine English tongue.
Thou, Love, by making me love one,
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion
For younger lovers, dost iny gifts thus dispropor-
tion.

Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying; because Love dies too.
Then all your beauties will be no more worth
Than gold in mines, where none doth draw it forth;
And all your graces no more use shall have,
Than a sun-dial in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me Love her, who doth neglect both me and thee, T' invent and practise this one way, t' annihilate all three.

THE WILL.

BEFORE I sign my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies; I here bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see;
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; t'ambassadors mine ears;
To women, or the sea, my tears;
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore
By making me love her who 'd twenty more,
That I should give to none, but such as bad too
much before.

My constancy I to the planets give;

My truth to them who at the court do live;
Mine ingenuity and openness

To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness;
My silence t' any who abroad have been;

My money to a capuchin.

Thou, Love, taugh'st me, by appointing me To love there, where no love receiv'd can be, Only to give to such as have no good capacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics;
All my good works unto the schismatics
Of Amsterdam; my best civility

And courtship to an university:
My modesty I give to soldiers bare.

My patience let gamesters share.
Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her, that holds my love disparity,
Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity.