So, if I now should utter this,
Others (because no more
Such stuff to work upon there is)
Would love but as before.

But he who loveliness within

Hath found, all outward loathes,
For he who colour loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.

If, as I have, you also do

Virtue in woman see,

And dare love that, and say so too,
And forget the He and She;

And if this love, though placëd so,
From profane men you hide,
Which will no faith on this bestow,
Or, if they do, deride;

Then you have done a braver thing
Than all the Worthies did,
And a braver thence will spring,
Which is, to keep that hid.

The Canonization

FOR God's sake, hold your tongue and let me love ; Or chide my palsy or my gout;

My true grey hairs or ruin'd fortune flout;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts, improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,

Observe his Honour, or his Grace;
Or the King's real or his stamp'd face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?

What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd? Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground? When did my colds a forward Spring remove? When did the heats which my veins fill Add one more to the plaguy bill? Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still Litigious men, whom quarrels move, Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,

We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse

Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns all shall approve
Us canonized for love;

And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;

You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage; Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove Into the glasses of your eyes;

So made such mirrors. and such spies, That they did all to you epitomize:Countries, towns, courts beg from above A pattern of your love."

Lovers' Infiniteness

IF yet I have not all thy love,

Dear, I shall never have it all;

I cannot breathe one other sigh to move,
Nor can entreat one other tear to fall;

And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters, I have spent:
Yet no more can be due to me

Than at the bargain made was meant :

If, then, thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
Dear, I shall never have it all.

Or if then thou gavest me all,

All was but all which thou hadst then : But if in thy heart since there be, or shall New love created be by other men,

Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, in letters outbid me,

This new love may beget new fears;
For this love was not vowed by thee,
And yet it was, thy gift being general :
The ground, thy heart, is mine; whatever shall
Grow there, dear, I should have it all.

Yet I would not have all yet;

He that hath all can have no more;

And since my love doth every day admit

New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in

store.

Thou canst not every day give me thy heart;
If thou canst give it, then thou never gav'st it:
Love's riddles are, that, though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing sav'st it,
But we will love a way more liberal

Than changing hearts,—to join them; so we shall
Be one, and one another's All.

Love's Growth

I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,

Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix'd of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
Love's not so pure and abstract as they use
To say which have no mistress but their Muse;
But as all else, being elemented too,

Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,

Love by the spring is grown;

As in the firmament

Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love-deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love's awaken'd root do bud out now.

If, as in water stirr'd more circles be

Produced by one, love such additions take,

Those like so many spheres but one heaven make, For they are all concentric unto thee;

And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get

New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate this spring's increase.

Love's Deity

I LONG to talk with some old lover's ghost
Who died before the god of love was born.
I cannot think that he who then loved most
Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn.
But since this god produced 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 practised 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, if I love who loves not 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.
O, were we wakened by this tyranny
To ungod 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 loth to see. Falsehood is worse than hate; and that must be If she whom I love should love me.

Song

SWEETEST love, I do not go
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;