My hart the Anuile where my thoughts doe beate, My words the hammers fashioning my desire, My breast the forge, including all the heate, Loue is the fuell which maintaines the fire:...
Blacke pytchy Night, companyon of my woe, The Inne of care, the Nurse of drery sorrow, Why lengthnest thou thy darkest howres so, Still to prolong my long tyme lookt-for morrow?...
Sweete secrecie, what tongue can tell thy worth? What mortall pen sufficiently can prayse thee? What curious Pensill serues to lim thee forth? What Muse hath power aboue thy height to raise thee?...
The golden Sunne vpon his fiery wheeles The horned Ram doth in his course awake, And of iust length our night and day doth make, Flinging the Fishes backward with his heeles:...
Who list to praise the dayes delicious lyght, Let him compare it to her heauenly eye, The sun-beames to the lustre of her sight; So may the learned like the similie. The mornings Crimson to her lyps alike,...
Define my loue, and tell the ioyes of heauen, Expresse my woes, and shew the paynes of hell; Declare what fate vnlucky starres haue giuen, And aske a world vpon my life to dwell....
Since holy Vestall lawes haue been neglected, The Gods pure fire hath been extinguisht quite; No Virgin once attending on that light, Nor yet those heauenly secrets once respected;...
When I first ended, then I first began; The more I trauell, further from my rest; Where most I lost, there most of all I wan; Pyned with hunger, rysing from a feast....
Goe you, my lynes, Embassadours of loue, With my harts tribute to her conquering eyes, From whence, if you one tear of pitty moue For all my woes, that onely shall suffise....
In one whole world is but one Phoenix found, A Phoenix thou, this Phoenix then alone: By thy rare plume thy kind is easly knowne, With heauenly colours dide, with natures wonder cround....
Stay, stay, sweet Time; behold, or ere thou passe From world to world, thou long hast sought to see, That wonder now wherein all wonders be, Where heauen beholds her in a mortall glasse....
Vnto the World, to Learning, and to Heauen, Three nines there are, to euerie one a nine; One number of the earth, the other both diuine, One wonder woman now makes three od numbers euen....
Beauty sometime, in all her glory crowned, Passing by that cleere fountain of thine eye, Her sun-shine face there chaunsing to espy, Forgot herselfe, and thought she had been drowned....
Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits, Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth, Come, let us go,--to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered,...
Is it illusion? or does there a spirit from perfecter ages, Here, even yet, amid loss, change, and corruption, abide? Does there a spirit we know not, though seek, though we find, comprehend not,...
Yet to the wondrous St. Peter's, and yet to the solemn Rotonda, Mingling with heroes and gods, yet to the Vatican Walls, Yet may we go, and recline, while a whole mighty world seems above us,...
Eastward, or Northward, or West? I wander and ask as I wander, Weary, yet eager and sure, Where shall I come to my love? Whitherward hasten to seek her? Ye daughters of Italy, tell me,...
There is a city, upbuilt on the quays of the turbulent Arno, Under Fiesole's heights, thither are we to return? There is a city that fringes the curve of the inflowing waters,...
My father left a park to me, But it is wild and barren, A garden too with scarce a tree, And waster than a warren: Yet say the neighbours when they call, It is not bad but good land,...