Love is not always harsh and deadly sin: If it be love of loveliness divine, It leaves the heart all soft and infantine For rays of God's own grace to enter in....
What though long waiting wins more happiness Than petulant desire is wont to gain, My luck in latest age hath brought me pain, Thinking how brief must be an old man's bliss....
From happy tears to woeful smiles, from peace Eternal to a brief and hollow truce, How have I fallen!--when 'tis truth we lose, Sense triumphs o'er all adverse impulses....
If love be chaste, if virtue conquer ill, If fortune bind both lovers in one bond, If either at the other's grief despond, If both be governed by one life, one will;...
Give back unto mine eyes, ye fount and rill, Those streams, not yours, that are so full and strong, That swell your springs, and roll your waves along...
I cannot by the utmost flight of thought Conceive another form of air or clay, Wherewith against thy beauty to array My wounded heart in armour fancy-wrought:...
Ye dwellers on this world, to the first Mind Exalt your eyes; and ye shall see how low Vile Tyranny, wearing the glorious show Of nobleness and worth, keeps you confined....
Lycoris, Lycidas, and Dryope Cannot, dear Niblo, save thy name from death; Shadows that fleet, and flowers that yield their breath, Match not the Love that craves infinity....