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.

Such 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.

But, O, alas! so long, so far

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,

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 fced 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

'T' was 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.

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