Thomas Carew
Secrecy Protested.
FEAR not, dear love, that I'll reveal
Those hours of pleasure we two steal ;
No eye shall see, nor yet the sun
Descry, what thou and I have done.
No ear shall hear our love, but we
Silent as the night will be ;
The god of love himself (whose dart
Did first wound mine and then thy heart),
Shall never know that we can tell
What sweets in stol'n embraces dwell.
This only means may find it out ;
If, when I die, physicians doubt
What caused my death, and there to view
Of all their judgements which was true,
Rip up my heart, oh ! then, I fear,
The world will see thy picture there.
Ingrateful Beauty Threatened
Know Celia, since thou art so proud,
'Twas I that gave thee thy renown;
Thou hadst, in the forgotten crowd
Of common beauties, liv'd unknown,
Had not my verse exhal'd thy name,
And with it imp'd the wings of fame.
That killing power is none of thine,
I gave it to thy voice, and eyes;
Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine;
Thou art my star, shin'st in my skies;
Then dart not from thy borrow'd sphere
Lightning on him that fix'd thee there.
Tempt me with such affrights no more,
Lest what I made, I uncreate;
Let fools thy mystic forms adore,
I'll know thee in thy mortal state;
Wise poets that wrapp'd Truth in tales,
Knew her themselves, through all her veils.
Lips and Eyes.
IN Celia's face a question did arise,
Which were more beautiful, her lips or eyes ?
“ We,” said the eyes, “send forth those pointed darts
Which pierce the hardest adamantine hearts.”
“ From us,” repli'd the lips, “proceed those blisses
Which lovers reap by kind words and sweet kisses.”
Then wept the eyes, and from their springs did pour
Of liquid oriental pearl a shower ;
Whereat the lips, moved with delight and pleasure,
Through a sweet smile unlock'd their pearly treasure
And bad Love judge, whether did add more grace
Weeping or smiling pearls to Celia's face.
Song. Mediocrity in love rejected.
GIVE me more love or more disdain ;
The torrid or the frozen zone
Bring equal ease unto my pain,
The temperate affords me none :
Either extreme of love or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.
Give me a storm ; if it be love,
Like Dana? in that golden shower,
I swim in pleasure ; if it prove
Disdain, that torrent will devour
My vulture-hopes ; and he's possess'd
Of heaven, that's but from hell released.
Then crown my joys or cure my pain :
Give me more love or more disdain.
He That Loves A Rosy Cheek
He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from star-like eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires:
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts, and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires:
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.
Celia Beeding, To the Surgeon
Fond man, that canst believe her blood
Will from those purple channels flow;
Or that the pure untainted flood
Can any foul distemper know;
Or that thy weak steel can incise
The crystal case wherein it lies:
Know, her quick blood, proud of his seat,
Runs dancing through her azure veins;
Whose harmony no cold nor heat
Disturbs, whose hue no tincture stains:
And the hard rock wherein it dwells
The keenest darts of love repels.
But thou repli'st, "behold, she bleeds!"
Fool! thou 'rt deceiv'd, and dost not know
The mystic knot whence this proceeds,
How lovers in each other grow:
Thou struck'st her arm, but 'twas my heart
Shed all the blood, felt all the smart.
Song
ASK me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty's orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.
Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.
Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters and keeps warm her note.
Ask me no more where those stars 'light
That downwards fall in dead of night;
For in your eyes they sit, and there
Fixed become as in their sphere.
Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
Song. Good Counsel to a Young Maid
GAZE not on thy beauty's pride,
Tender maid, in the false tide
That from lovers' eyes doth slide.
Let thy faithful crystal show
How thy colours come and go :
Beauty takes a foil from woe.
Love, that in those smooth streams lies
Under pity's fair disguise,
Will thy melting heart surprise.
Nets of passion's finest thread,
Snaring poems, will be spread,
All to catch thy maidenhead.
Then beware ! for those that cure
Love's disease, themselves endure
For reward a calenture.
Rather let the lover pine,
Than his pale cheek should assign
A perpetual blush to thine.
An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. John
Can we not force from widow'd poetry,
Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy
To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust,
Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust,
Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower
Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour,
Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay
Upon thy ashes, on the funeral day?
Have we no voice, no tune? Didst thou dispense
Through all our language, both the words and sense?
'Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain
And sober Christian precepts still retain,
Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame,
Grave homilies and lectures, but the flame
Of thy brave soul (that shot such heat and light
As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright,
Committed holy rapes upon our will,
Did through the eye the melting heart distil,
And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach
As sense might judge what fancy could not reach)
Must be desir'd forever. So the fire
That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic quire,
Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath,
Glow'd here a while, lies quench'd now in thy death.
The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds
O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds
Of servile imitation thrown away,
And fresh invention planted; thou didst pay
The debts of our penurious bankrupt age;
Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage
A mimic fury, when our souls must be
Possess'd, or with Anacreon's ecstasy,
Or Pindar's, not their own; the subtle cheat
Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat
Of two-edg'd words, or whatsoever wrong
By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue,
Thou hast redeem'd, and open'd us a mine
Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line
Of masculine expression, which had good
Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood
Our superstitious fools admire, and hold
Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold,
Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more
They each in other's dust had rak'd for ore.
Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time,
And the blind fate of language, whose tun'd chime
More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayst claim
From so great disadvantage greater fame,
Since to the awe of thy imperious wit
Our stubborn language bends, made only fit
With her tough thick-ribb'd hoops to gird about
Thy giant fancy, which had prov'd too stout
For their soft melting phrases. As in time
They had the start, so did they cull the prime
Buds of invention many a hundred year,
And left the rifled fields, besides the fear
To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands
Of what is purely thine, thy only hands,
(And that thy smallest work) have gleaned more
Than all those times and tongues could reap before.
But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be
Too hard for libertines in poetry;
They will repeal the goodly exil'd train
Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign
Were banish'd nobler poems; now with these,
The silenc'd tales o' th' Metamorphoses
Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page,
Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age
Turn ballad rhyme, or those old idols be
Ador'd again, with new apostasy.
Oh, pardon me, that break with untun'd verse
The reverend silence that attends thy hearse,
Whose awful solemn murmurs were to thee,
More than these faint lines, a loud elegy,
That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence
The death of all the arts; whose influence,
Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies,
Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies.
So doth the swiftly turning wheel not stand
In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand,
But some small time maintain a faint weak course,
By virtue of the first impulsive force;
And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile
Thy crown of bays, oh, let it crack awhile,
And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes
Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes.
I will not draw the envy to engross
All thy perfections, or weep all our loss;
Those are too numerous for an elegy,
And this too great to be express'd by me.
Though every pen should share a distinct part,
Yet art thou theme enough to tire all art;
Let others carve the rest, it shall suffice
I on thy tomb this epitaph incise:
Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit
The universal monarchy of wit;
Here lie two flamens, and both those, the best,
Apollo's first, at last, the true God's priest.
Song: Eternity of Love Protested
How ill doth he deserve a lover's name,
Whose pale weak flame
Cannot retain
His heat, in spite of absence or disdain;
But doth at once, like paper set on fire,
Burn and expire;
True love can never change his seat,
Nor did her ever love, that could retreat.
That noble flame which my breast keeps alive
Shall still survive
When my soul's fled;
Nor shall my love die when my body's dead,
That shall wait on me to the lower shade,
And never fade;
My very ashes in their urn
Shall, like a hallow'd lamp, forever burn.
A Divine Mistress
In Nature's pieces still I see
Some error that might mended be;
Something my wish could still remove,
Alter or add; but my fair love
Was fram'd by hands far more divine,
For she hath every beauteous line:
Yet I had been far happier,
Had Nature, that made me, made her.
Then likeness might (that love creates)
Have made her love what now she hates;
Yet I confess I cannot spare
From her just shape the smallest hair;
Nor need I beg from all the store
Of heaven for her one beauty more.
She hath too much divinity for me:
You gods, teach her some more humanity.
Another
THIS little vault, this narrow room,
Of Love and Beauty is the tomb;
The dawning beam, that 'gan to clear
Our clouded sky, lies darken'd here,
For ever set to us: by Death
Sent to enflame the World Beneath.
'Twas but a bud, yet did contain
More sweetness than shall spring again;
A budding Star, that might have grown
Into a Sun when it had blown.
This hopeful Beauty did create
New life in Love's declining state;
But now his empire ends, and we
From fire and wounding darts are free;
His brand, his bow, let no man fear:
The flames, the arrows, all lie here.
Disdain Returned
He that loves a rosy cheek,
Or a coral lip admires,
Or from starlike eyes doth seek
Fuel to maintain his fires;
As old Time makes these decay,
So his flames must waste away.
But a smooth and steadfast mind,
Gentle thoughts and calm desires,
Hearts with equal love combined,
Kindle never-dying fires.
Where these are not, I despise
Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes.
No tears, Celia, now shall win
My resolved heart to return;
I have searched thy soul within,
And find naught but pride and scorn;
I have learned thy arts, and now
Can disdain as much as thou.
Some power, in my revenge convey
That love to her I cast away.
Song. A Beautiful Mistress.
IF when the sun at noon displays
His brighter rays,
Thou but appear,
He then, all pale with shame and fear,
Quencheth his light,
Hides his dark brow, flies from thy sight,
And grows more dim,
Compared to thee, than stars to him.
If thou but show thy face again,
When darkness doth at midnight reign,
The darkness flies, and light is hurl'd
Round about the silent world :
So as alike thou driv'st away
Both light and darkness, night and day.
