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But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts,
Which I, by lacking, have supposed dead;
And there reigns love, and all love's loving parts,
And all those friends, which I thought buried.
How many a holy and obsequious tear

Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye,
As interest of the dead, which now appear
But things remov'd, that hidden in thee lie!
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live,
Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone;
Who all their parts of me to thee did give,
That due of many, now is thine alone.
Their images I lov'd, I view in thee,
And thou (all they) hast all the all of me.

If thou survive my well-contented day,

When that churl, death, my bones with dust shall cover;
And shalt, by fortune, once more re-survey
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover;
Compare them with the bett'ring of the time,
And tho' they be out-stript by every pen,
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme,
Exceeded by the height of happier men.

O, then, vouchsafe me but this loving thought!
Had my friend's muse grown with this growing age,
A dearer birth than this, his love had bought,
To march in ranks of better equipage;

But since he died, and poets better prove,
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.

FRIENDLY CONCORD.

If music and sweet poetry agree,

As they must needs, (the sister and the brother)
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute, doth ravish human sense;
Spencer to me, whose deep conceit is such,
As passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound,
That Phoebus' lute (the queen of music) makes ;

[9] We may hence infer that these were among our author's earliest productions. Spencer is the poet probably spoken of. MALONE.

And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd,
When as himself to singing he betakes.

One god is god of both, (as poets fain)

One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

INHUMANITY.

Fair was the morn, when the fair queen of love,
Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove,
For Adon's sake, a youngster proud and wild,
Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill,
Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds,
She, silly queen, with more than love's good-will,
Forbad the boy he should not pass those grounds:
Once (quoth he) did I see a fair sweet youth
Here in these brakes deep wounded with a boar,
Deep in the thigh a spectacle of ruth;

See in my thigh (quoth she) here was the sore;
She shewed hers, he saw more wounds than one,
And blushing fled, and left her all alone.

A CONGRATULATION.

How can my muse want subject to invent,
While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent
For every vulgar paper to rehearse?

O give thyself the thanks, if ought in me,
Worthy perusal, stand against thy sight:
For who's so dull, that cannot write to thee,
When thou thyself dost give invention light?
Be thou the tenth muse, ten times more in worth,
Than those old nine which rhymers invocate ;
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth
Eternal numbers to out-live long date.

If my slight muse do please these curious days, The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. O how thy worth with manners may I sing, When thou art all the better part of me?

What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?
Even for this, let us divided live,

And our dear love lose name of single one?
That by this separation I may give

That due to thee, which thou deserv'st alone.

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O, absence! what a torment would'st thou prove,
Were 't not that thy sour leisure gave sweet leave
To entertain the time with thoughts of love,
Who time and thoughts so sweetly dost deceive;
And that thou teachest how to make one twain,
By praising him here, who doth hence remain.
Take all my loves, my love, yea take them all;
What hast thou then more than thou had'st before?
No love, my love, that thou may'st true love call;
All mine was thine, before thou had'st this more.
Then if for my love, thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;
But yet be blam'd, if thou thyself deceivest
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest.
I do forgive thy robb'ry, gentle thief,
Although thou steal thee all my poverty:
And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong, than hate's known injury.
Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows,
Kill me with spite, yet we must not be foes.

LOSS AND GAIN.

Those petty wrongs that liberty commit,
When I am sometimes absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befit,

For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won ;
Beauteous thou art, and therefore to be assailed,
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till he have prevailed?
Ah, me but yet thou might'st my seat forbear,
And chides thy beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in the riot even there,
Where thou art forc'd to break a twofold truth;
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine by thy beauty being false to me.

That thou hast her, it is not all my grief,
And yet it may be said I lov'd her dearly;
That she hath thee, is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.
Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye,

Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her;
And for my sake even so doth she abuse me,

Suffering my friend, for my sake, to approve her.
If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain,
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss:
Both find each other, and I lose both twain,
And both for my sake lay on me this cross.
But here's the joy, my friend and I are one,
Sweet flattery, then she loves but me alone.

FOOLISH DISDAIN.

Venus, with Adonis sitting by her,
Under a myrtle shade, began to woo him:
She told the youngling how god Mars did try her,
And as he fell to her, she fell to him.

Even thus (quoth she) the warlike god embrac'd me,
And then she clipt Adonis in her arms:

Even thus (quoth she) the warlike god unlac'd me,
As if the boy should use like loving charms.
Even thus (quoth she) he seized on my lips,
And with her lips on his did act the seizure:
And as she fetched breath, away he skips,
And would not take her meaning nor her pleasure.
Ah! that I had my lady at this bay,
To kiss and clip me till I run away.

ANCIENT ANTIPATHY.

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together;
Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.
Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short;

Youth is nimble, age is lame;

Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;

Youth is wild, and age is tame.

Age, I do abhor thee; youth, I do adore thee;

O my love, my love is young:

Age, I do defy thee, O ! sweet shepherd, hie thee; For, methinks thou stay'st too long.

BEAUTY'S VALUATION.

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good;
A shining gloss, that fadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies, when first it 'gins to bud;
A brittle glass, that's broken presently.

A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,

Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.
And as goods lost, are seld' or never found ;
As faded gloss no rubbing will refresh ;
As flowers dead, lie withered on the ground;
As broken glass, no cement can redress;

So beauty blemish'd once, for ever's lost,
In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost.

MELANCHOLY THOUGHTS.

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way;
For then, despite of space, I would be brought
To limits far remote, where thou dost stay.
No matter then altho' my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth remov'd from thee;
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But ah! thought kills me, that I am not thought,
To leap large lengths of miles when thou art gone;
But that so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend time's leisure with my moan;
Receiving nought by elements so slow,
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

The other two, slight air, and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide ;
The first my thought, the other my desire;
These present, absent, with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone,
In tender embassy of love to thee,

My life being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, opprest with melancholy;
Until life's composition be recured,

By those swift messengers return'd from thee,
Who even but now come back again assured
Of their fair health, recounting it to me.

This told, I joy; but then no longer glad,

I send them back again, and straight grow sad.

LOVE'S LOSS.

Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon faded,
Pluck'd in the bud, and faded in the spring:
Bright orient pearl, alack! too timely shaded,
Fair creature kill'd too soon by death's sharp sting.
Like a green plumb, that hangs upon a tree,
And falls (thro' wind) before the fall should be.

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