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,...
If the quick spirits in your eye Now languish and anon must die; If every sweet and every grace Must fly from that forsaken face; Then, Celia, let us reap our joys Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys....
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...
Know, Celia, since thou art so proud, 'Twas I that gave thee thy renown. Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd Of common beauties lived unknown Had not my verse extolled thy name,...
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...
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,...
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;...
I'll gaze no more on her bewitching face, Since ruin harbours there in every place; For my enchanted soul alike she drowns With calms and tempests of her smiles and frowns....
If the quick spirits in your eye Now languish and anon must die; If every sweet and every grace Must fly from that forsaken face; Then, Celia, let us reap our joys Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys....
Now that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;...