XLIV.

Α'

SONG.

THOMAS DEKKER,

1570 ?-1638?

RT thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers:
O sweet content!

Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?

O punishment.

Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed?
To add to golden numbers, golden numbers.

O sweet content, O sweet content.

Work apace, apace, apace, apace,
Honest labour bears a lovely face,

Then hey nonny, nonny: hey nonny, nonny.

Canst drink the waters of the crisped spring,
O sweet content!

Swim'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears,
O punishment.

Then he that patiently want's burden bears,
No burden bears, but is a king, a king.

O sweet content, O sweet content.

Work apace, apace, apace, apace,
Honest labour bears a lovely face,

Then hey nonny, nonny: hey nonny, nonny.

XLV.

JOHN WEBSTER. ?

CORNELIA'S SONG.

ALL for the robin-red-breast and the wren,

CAL

Since o'er shady groves they hover,

And with leaves and flowers do cover

The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Call unto his funeral dole

The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,

To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,

And, when gay tombs are robbed, sustain no harm;

But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

Let holy church receive him duly,

Since he paid the church tithes truly.

XLVI.

JOHN DONNE, 1573-1631.

S

THE MESSAGE.

END home my long-strayed eyes to me,

Which, oh! too long have dwelt on thee;

But if there they have learnt such ill,

Such forced fashions

And false passions,

That they be

Made by thee

Fit for no good sight, keep them still.

Send home my harmless heart again,
Which no unworthy thought could stain;
But if it be taught by thine

To make jestings

Of protestings,

And break both

Word and oath,

Keep it, for then 'tis none of mine.

Yet send me back my heart and eyes,
That I may know and see thy lies,

And may laugh and joy when thou
Art in anguish,

And dost languish

For some one

That will none,

Or prove as false as thou dost now.

XLVII.

VALEDICTION, FORBIDDING MOURNING.

AS

S 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; "Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,

Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidations of the spheres,

Though greater far, are innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love,

Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence; for that it doth remove Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so far refined,

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 fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth if the 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.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circles just,

And makes me end where I begun.