May she enjoy it

Whose merit dares apply it,

But Modesty dares still deny it.

Such Worth as this is
Shall fix my flying wishes,
And determine them to kisses.

Let her full glory,

My fancies, fly before ye!

Be you my fictions, but her story.

RICHARD CRASHAW

TO LUCASTA GOING TO THE WARS

ELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind

TELL

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

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,
Loved I not Honour more.

RICHARD LOVELACE

TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON

WHEN

WHEN Love with unconfinèd wings
Hovers within my gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at the grates;

When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,

The gods that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.

When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,

Our careless heads with roses bound,

;

Our hearts with loyal flames
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free,
Fishes that tipple in the deep

Know no such liberty.

When, like committed linnets, I
With shriller throat shall sing
The sweetness, mercy, majesty,
And glories of my King ;
When I shall voice aloud how good
He is, how great should be,
Enlarged winds that curl the flood
Know no such liberty.

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage:

If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.

RICHARD LOVELACE

TO LUCASTA GOING BEYOND THE SEAS

F to be absent were to be

IF

Away from thee

;

Or that when I am gone,

You or I were alone;

Then, my Lucasta, might I crave

Pity from blust'ring wind or swallowing wave.

But I'll not sigh one blast or gale

To swell my sail,

Or pay a tear to suage

The foaming blue-god's rage;

For, whether he will let me pass

Or no, I'm still as happy as I was.

Though seas and land betwixt us both,
Our faith and troth,

Like separated souls,

All time and space controls.

Above the highest sphere we meet,

Unseen, unknown, and greet as angels greet.

So then we do anticipate

Our after-fate,

And are alive i' th' skies,

If thus our lips and eyes

Can speak like spirits unconfined

In heaven, their earthly bodies left behind.

RICHARD LOVELACE

AWAKE, AWAKE, MY LYRE!

AWAKE, awake, my Lyre!

And tell thy silent master's humble tale

In sounds that may prevail;

Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:
Though so exalted she

And I so lowly be,

Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.

Hark, how the strings awake!

And, though the moving hand approach not near,
Themselves with awful fear

A kind of numerous trembling make.
Now all thy forces try;

Now all thy charms apply;

Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.

Weak Lyre! thy virtue sure

Is useless here, since thou art only found
To cure, but not to wound,

And she to wound, but not to cure.
Too weak too wilt thou prove

My passion to remove;

Physic to other ills, thou'rt nourishment to Love.

Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre!
For thou canst never tell my humble tale
In sounds that will prevail,

Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire;

All thy vain mirth lay by,

Bid thy strings silent lie,

Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre, and let thy master die.

ABRAHAM COWLEY

TO HIS COY MISTRESS

AD we but world enough, and time,

HAD

This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down, and think which way To walk, and pass our long love's day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews;
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

heart.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near,
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song, then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust :

The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,