Richard Lovelace

From the engraving by Hollar

after the drawing by Colonel Francis Lovelace

Be you the Lady of Love's year,
Where your eyes shine his suns appear,
There all the year is Love's long Spring,
There all the year

Love's nightingales shall sit and sing.

Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)

To Lucafta. Going to the Warres

WELL me not, (sweet,) I am unkinde,
That from the nunnerie

TEL

Of thy chaste breast and quiet minde
To warre and armes I flie.

True: a new Mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field,

And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such,
As you too shall adore:

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Lov'd I not Honour more.

Lucafta Weeping

L

UCASTA wept, and still the bright
Inamour'd god of day,

With his soft handkercher of light,
Kist the wet pearles away.

But when her teares his heate or'ecame
In cloudes he quensht his beames,
And griev'd, wept out his eye of flame,
So drowned her sad streames.

At this she smiled, when straight the sun
Cleer'd by her kinde desires:

And by her eyes' reflexion

Fast kindl'd there his fires.

Upon the Curtaine of Lucafta's

O

Picture

H, stay that covetous hand; first turn all eye,
All depth and minde: then mystically spye
Her soul's faire picture, her faire soul's, in all

So truely copied from th' originall,

That you will sweare her body by this law
Is but its shadow, as this, its;

now draw.

Ellinda's Glove

HOU snowy farme with thy five tenements!
Tell thy white mistris here was one,

TH

That call'd to pay his dayly rents:

But she a-gathering flow'rs and hearts is gone,
And thou left voyd to rude possession.

But grieve not, pretty Ermin cabinet,
Thy alabaster lady will come home;
If not, what tenant can there fit
The slender turnings of thy narrow roome,
But must ejected be by his owne dombe?

Then give me leave to leave my rent with thee:
Five kisses, one unto a place:

For though the lute's too high for me,
Yet servants, knowing minikin nor base,
Are still allow'd to fiddle with the case.

To

my

O

The Graffehopper

noble friend, Mr. Charles Cotton

H thou, that swing'st upon the waving care
Of some well-filled oaten beard,

Drunk ev'ry night with a delicious teare
Dropt thee from Heav'n, where now th' art reard.