This while we are abroad, Shall we not touch our Lyre? Shall we not sing an ODE? Shall that holy Fire, In vs that strongly glow'd, In this cold Ayre expire?
O thou fayre siluer Thames: O cleerest chrystall flood, Beta alone the Phenix is, of all thy watery brood, The Queene of Virgins onely she: And thou the Queene of floods shalt be:...
Tell me fayre flocke, (if so you can conceaue) The sodaine cause of my night-sunnes eclipse, If this be wrought me my light to bereaue, By Magick spels, from some inchanting lips...
Melpomine put on thy mourning Gaberdine, And set thy song vnto the dolefull Base, And with thy sable vayle shadow thy face, with weeping verse, attend his hearse,...
The Ryme nor marres, nor makes, Nor addeth it, nor takes, From that which we propose; Things imaginarie Doe so strangely varie, That quickly we them lose.
If in opinion of iudiciall wit, Primaleons sweet Invention well deserue: Then he (no lesse) which hath translated it, Which doth his sense, his forme, his phrase, obserue....
Such men as hold intelligence with Letters, And in that nice and Narrow way of Verse, As oft they lend, so oft they must be Debters, If with the Muses they will haue commerce:...
Like an adventurous sea-farer am I, Who hath some long and dang'rous voyage been, And called to tell of his discovery, How far he sailed, what countries he had seen,...
My heart was slain, and none but you and I; Who should I think the murder should commit? Since but yourself there was no creature by But only I, guiltless of murdering it....
Taking my pen, with words to cast my woe, Duly to count the sum of all my cares, I find my griefs innumerable grow, The reck'nings rise to millions of despairs. And thus dividing of my fatal hours,...
Bright star of beauty, on whose eyelids sit A thousand nymph-like and enamoured graces, The goddesses of memory and wit, Which there in order take their several places;...
As other men, so I myself do muse Why in this sort I wrest invention so, And why these giddy metaphors I use, Leaving the path the greater part do go. I will resolve you. I'm a lunatic;...
As in some countries far remote from hence, The wretched creature destin'd to die, Having the judgment due to his offence, By surgeons begged, their art on him to try,...
Calling to mind since first my love begun, Th'uncertain times, oft varying in their course, How things still unexpectedly have run, As't please the Fates by their resistless force;...
What dost thou mean to cheat me of my heart, To take all mine and give me none again? Or have thine eyes such magic or that art That what they get they ever do retain?...
Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore, My soul-shrined saint, my fair Idea lives; O bless'd brook, whose milk-white swans adore Thy crystal stream, refin'd by her eyes,...
Yet read at last the story of my woe, The dreary abstracts of my endless cares, With my life's sorrow interlin'd so, Smoked with my sighs, and blotted with my tears, The sad memorials of my miseries,...
As Love and I late harboured in one inn, With Proverbs thus each other entertain. "In love there is no lack," thus I begin: "Fair words make fools," replieth he again....
My fair, if thou wilt register my love, A world of volumes shall thereof arise; Preserve my tears, and thou thyself shall prove A second flood down raining from mine eyes;...