Love, love me now, because I place Thee here among my righteous race: The bastard slips may droop and die Wanting both root and earth; but thy Immortal self shall boldly trust...
Did I or love, or could I others draw To the indulgence of the rugged law, The first foundation of that zeal should be By reading all her paragraphs in thee, Who dost so fitly with the laws unite,...
For civil, clean, and circumcised wit, And for the comely carriage of it, Thou art the man, the only man best known, Mark'd for the true wit of a million: From whom we'll reckon. Wit came in but since...
When first I find those numbers thou dost write, To be most soft, terse, sweet, and perpolite: Next, when I see thee tow'ring in the sky, In an expansion no less large than high;...
Since shed or cottage I have none, I sing the more, that thou hast one; To whose glad threshold, and free door I may a Poet come, though poor; And eat with thee a savoury bit,...
Tell me, young man, or did the Muses bring Thee less to taste than to drink up their spring, That none hereafter should be thought, or be A poet, or a poet-like but thee?...
Whom should I fear to write to if I can Stand before you, my learn'd diocesan? And never show blood-guiltiness or fear To see my lines excathedrated here. Since none so good are but you may condemn,...
How rich and pleasing thou, my Julia, art, In each thy dainty and peculiar part! First, for thy Queen-ship on thy head is set Of flowers a sweet commingled coronet; About thy neck a carkanet is bound,...
Permit me, Julia, now to go away; Or by thy love decree me here to stay. If thou wilt say that I shall live with thee, Here shall my endless tabernacle be: If not, as banish'd, I will live alone...
Besides us two, i' th' temple here's not one To make up now a congregation. Let's to the altar of perfumes then go, And say short prayers; and when we have done so, Then we shall see, how in a little space...
Thou know'st, my Julia, that it is thy turn This morning's incense to prepare and burn. The chaplet and Inarculum[L] here be, With the white vestures, all attending thee....
Stand forth, brave man, since fate has made thee here The Hector over aged Exeter, Who for a long, sad time has weeping stood Like a poor lady lost in widowhood, But fears not now to see her safety sold,...
Thou'st dar'd too far; but, fury, now forbear To give the least disturbance to her hair: But less presume to lay a plait upon Her skin's most smooth and clear expansion. 'Tis like a lawny firmament as yet,...
I, who have favour'd many, come to be Grac'd now, at last, or glorified by thee, Lo! I, the lyric prophet, who have set On many a head the delphic coronet, Come unto thee for laurel, having spent...
In this little vault she lies, Here, with all her jealousies: Quiet yet; but if ye make Any noise they both will wake, And such spirits raise 'twill then Trouble death to lay again.
Here lies Jonson with the rest Of the poets: but the best. Reader, would'st thou more have known? Ask his story, not this stone. That will speak what this can't tell Of his glory. So farewell.