SONG.

TO HIS MISTRESS CONFINED.

THINK not, Phoebe, 'cause a cloud
Doth now thy silver brightness shroud,
My wand'ring eye

Can stoop to common beauties of the sky.
Rather be kind, and this eclipse
Shall neither hinder eye nor lips;
For we shall meet

Within our hearts, and kiss, and none shall see't.

Nor can'st thou in thy prison be
Without some living sign of me;

When thou dost spy

A sunbeam peep into the room, 'tis I :
For I am hid within a flame,
And thus into thy chamber came,
To let thee see

In what a martyrdom I burn for thee.

When thou do'st touch thy Lute, thou mayest
Think on my heart, on which thou playest ;
When each sad tone

Upon the strings doth show my deeper groan :
When thou dost please, they shall rebound
With nimble airs, struck to the sound

Of thy own voice:

O think, how much I tremble and rejoice!

There's no sad picture that doth dwell
Upon thy Arras-wall, but well

Resembles me;

No matter though our age do not agree.
Love can make old, as well as Time;
And he that doth but twenty climb,
If he dare prove

As true as I, shows four-score years in love.

THE PRIMROSE.

[Attributed, with The Enquiry,' to ROBERT HERRICK.] [p. 65.

SK me why I send you

ASK

here

This firstling of the infant Year?

Ask me why I send to you

This Primrose, all be-pearl'd with dew?

I straight whisper to your ears,

'The sweets of Love are wash'd with tears.'

Ask me why this flower does show
So yellow-green, and sickly too ?—
Ask me why the stalk is weak,
And bending, yet it doth not break?
I must tell you, 'These discover
What doubts and fears are in a Lover.'

THE TINDER.

F what mould did Nature frame me?

Or was it her intent to shame me?

That no woman can come near me,
Fair, but her I court to hear me?
Sure that Mistress, to whose beauty
First I paid a Lover's duty,

Burn'd in rage my heart to tinder :
That nor prayers nor tears can hinder,
But where ever I do turn me,
Every spark let fall doth burn me.

Women, since you thus inflame me,
Flint and steel I'll ever name ye.

[Cf. p. 66.

IN

A SONG.

N her fair cheeks two pits do lie,
To bury those slain by her eye;
So, spite of Death, this comforts me,
That fairly buried I shall be :

My grave with rose and lily spread !
O'tis a life to be so dead!

Come then, and kill me with thy eye:
For, if thou let me live, I die.
When I behold those lips again—
Reviving, what those eyes have slain,
With kisses sweet, whose balsam pure
Love's wounds, as soon as made, can cure-
Methinks 'tis sickness to be sound,

And there's no health to such a wound.

Come then, and kill me with thy eye:
For, if thou let me live, I die.

When in her chaste breast I behold
Those downy mounts of snow, ne'er cold;
And those blest hearts, her Beauty kills,
Revive by climbing those fair hills:
Methinks there's life in such a death,
And so t'expire inspires new breath.

Come then, and kill me with thy eye :
For, if thou let me live, I die.

Nymph, since no death is deadly, where
Such choice of Antidotes is near,
And your keen eyes but kill in vain
Those that are sound, as soon as slain;
That I no longer dead survive,

Your way 's to bury me alive

In Cupid's Cave: where happy I

May dying live, and living die.

Come then, and kill me with thy eye:

For, if thou let me live, I die.

THE CARVER.

TO HIS MISTRESS.

A CARVER, having loved too long in vain,

Hew'd out the portraiture of Venus' sun

In marble rock, upon the which did rain

Small drizzling drops, that from a fount did run; Imagining the drops would either wear

His fury out, or quench his living flame : But when he saw it bootless did appear,

He swore the water did augment the same. So I, that seek in verse to carve thee out, Hoping thy Beauty will my flame allay, Viewing my lines impolish'd all throughout, Find my will rather to my love obey : That with the Carver I my work do blame, Finding it still th' augmenter of my flame.

[i.e. Sculptor.

F

TO THE PAINTER.

`OND man, that hopest to catch that face

With those false colours, whose short grace

Serves but to show the lookers-on

The faults of thy presumption;
Or, at the least, to let us see
That is divine, but yet not she :
Say, you could imitate the rays
Of those eyes that outshine the days,
Or counterfeit in red and white
That most uncounterfeited light
Of her complexion; yet can'st thou,
Great master though thou be, tell how

To paint a Virtue? Then desist,
This Fair your artifice hath miss'd.

You should have mark'd how she begins
To grow in virtue, not in sins :
Instead of that same rosy dye,
You should have drawn out Modesty,

Whose beauty sits enthroned there,
And learn'd to look and blush at her.

Or can you colour just the same,
When virtue blushes, or when shame?
When sickness, and when innocence,
Shows pale or white unto the sense?
Can such coarse varnish e'er be said
To imitate her white and red?
This may do well elsewhere, in Spain,
Among those faces dyed in grain ;

So you may thrive, and what you do
Prove the best picture of the two.

Besides, if all I hear be true,
'Tis taken ill by some that you
Should be so insolently vain,
As to contrive all that rich gain
Into one Tablet, which alone
May teach us superstition :
Instructing our amazed eyes

To admire and worship Imag'ries,

Such as quickly might outshine

Some new Saint, were 't allow'd a shrine, And turn each wand'ring looker-on Into a new Pygmaleon.

Yet your art cannot equalise This picture in her Lover's eyes;

His eyes the pencils are which limn

Her truly, as her's copy him: