Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy 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.

THE EXPIRATION

So

break off this last lamenting kiss,

Which sucks two souls, and

vapours both away; Turn, thou ghost, that way, and let me turn this, And let ourselves benight our happiest day: We ask'd none leave to love; nor will we owe Any so cheap a death as saying, "Go."

Go! — and if that word have not quite kill'd thee,
Ease me with death, by bidding me go too;
Or, if it have, let my word work on me,
And a just office on a murderer do ;
Except it be too late, to kill me so,

Being double dead, going, and bidding go.

THE WILL

BEFORE I sigh 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; to ambassadors mine ears ; To women or the sea, my tears :

Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore By making me serve her who'd twenty more, Only to give to those that had 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 to any who abroad have been ;

My money to a Capuchin :

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointing me To love there where no love received can be, Only to give to those that have an incapacity.

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 patiënce 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.

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 portiön

For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportiön.

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,

To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all

three.