Written by
Richard Lovelace |
When love with unconfined 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 birds 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.
|
Written by
Andrew Marvell |
Sir,
Our times are much degenerate from those
Which your sweet muse with your fair fortune chose,
And as complexions alter with the climes,
Our wits have drawn the infection of our times.
That candid age no other way could tell
To be ingenious, but by speaking well.
Who best could praise had then the greatest praise,
'Twas more esteemed to give than bear the bays:
Modest ambition studied only then
To honour not herself but worthy men.
These virtues now are banished out of town,
Our Civil Wars have lost the civic crown.
He highest builds, who with most art destroys,
And against others' fame his own employs.
I see the envious caterpillar sit
On the fair blossom of each growing wit.
The air's already tainted with the swarms
Of insects which against you rise in arms:
Word-peckers, paper-rats, book-scorpions,
Of wit corrupted, the unfashioned sons.
The barb?d censurers begin to look
Like the grim consistory on thy book;
And on each line cast a reforming eye,
Severer than the young presbytery.
Till when in vain they have thee all perused,
You shall, for being faultless, be accused.
Some reading your Lucasta will allege
You wronged in her the House's privelege.
Some that you under sequestration are,
And one the book prohibits, because Kent
Their first petition by the author sent.
But when the beauteous ladies came to know
That their dear Lovelace was endangered so:
Lovelace that thawed the most congeal?d breast --
He who loved best and them defended best,
Whose hand so rudely grasps the steely brand,
Whose hand most gently melts the lady's hand --
They all in mutiny though yet undressed
Sallied, and would in his defence contest.
And one, the loveliest that was yet e'er seen,
Thinking that I too of the rout had been,
Mine eyes invaded with a female spite,
(She knew what pain 'twould cause to lose that sight.
)
`O no, mistake not,' I replied, `for I
In your defence, or in his cause, would die.
'
But he, secure of glory and of time,
Above their envy, or mine aid, doth climb.
Him valiant'st men and fairest nymphs approve;
His book in them finds judgement, with you love.
|
Written by
Richard Lovelace |
O thou that swing'st upon the waving ear
Of some well-filled oaten beard,
Drunk ev'ry night with a delicious tear
Dropped thee from heav'n, where now th' art reared,
The joys of earth and air are thine entire,
That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;
And, when the poppy works, thou dost retire
To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.
Up with the day, the sun thou welcom'st then,
Sport'st in the gilt plats of his beams,
And all these merry days mak'st merry men,
Thyself, and melancholy streams.
But ah the sickle!—golden ears are cropped;
Ceres and Bacchus bid good-night;
Sharp frosty fingers all your flow'rs have topped,
And what schythes spared, winds shave off quite.
Poor verdant fool! and now green ice!—thy joys,
Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,
Bid us lay in 'gainst winter rain, and poise
Their floods with an o'erflowing glass.
Thou best of men and friends! we will create
A genuine summer in each other's breast;
And spite of this cold time and frozen fate,
Thaw us a warm seat to our rest.
Our sacred hearths shall burn eternally
As vestal flames; the North-wind, he
Shall strike his frost-stretched wings, dissolve, and fly
This Etna in epitome.
Dropping December shall come weeping in,
Bewail th' usurping of his reign;
But when in show'rs of old Greek we begin,
Shall cry he hath his crown again!
Night as clear Hesper shall our tapers whip
From the light casements where we play,
And the dark hag from her black mantle strip,
And stick there everlasting day.
Thus richer than untempted kings are we,
That asking nothing, nothing need:
Though lord of all that seas embrace, yet he
That wants himself is poor indeed.
|
Written by
Richard Lovelace |
Why should you swear I am forsworn,
Since thine I vowed to be?
Lady, it is already morn,
And 'twas last night I swore to thee
That fond impossibility.
Have I not loved thee much and long,
A tedious twelve hours' space?
I must all other beauties wrong,
And rob thee of a new embrace,
Could I still dote upon thy face.
Not but all joy in thy brown hair
By others may be found;—
But I must search the black and fair,
Like skilful mineralists that sound
For treasure in unploughed-up ground.
Then if, when I have loved my round,
Thou prov'st the pleasant she,
With spoils of meaner beauties crowned
I laden will return to thee,
Ev'n sated with variety.
|
Written by
Richard Lovelace |
Amarantha, sweet and fair,
Ah, braid no more that shining hair!
As my curious hand or eye
Hovering round thee, let it fly!
Let it fly as unconfined
As its calm ravisher the wind,
Who hath left his darling th' East,
To wanton o'er that spicy nest.
Every tress must be confessed
But neatly tangled at the best,
Like a clew of golden thread
Most excellently ravelled.
Do not then wind up that light
In ribbands, and o'ercloud in night,
Like the sun in 's early ray;
But shake your head and scatter day!
See, 'tis broke! Within this grove,
The bower and the walks of love,
Weary lie we down and rest,
And fan each other's panting breast.
Here we'll strip and cool our fire,
In cream below, in milk-baths higher,
And when all wells are drawn dry,
I'll drink a tear out of thine eye.
Which our very joys shall leave,
That sorrows thus we can deceive;
Or our very sorrows weep,
That joys so ripe, so little keep.
|
Written by
Richard Lovelace |
If to be absent were to be
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 earthy bodies left behind.
|
Written by
Richard Lovelace |
Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breasts, 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.
|
Written by
Richard Lovelace |
Sweet serene sky-like flower,
Haste to adorn her bower;
From thy long cloudy bed
Shoot forth thy damask head!
New-startled blush of Flora,
The grief of pale Aurora,
Who will contest no more,
Haste, haste to strew her floor!
Vermilion ball that's given
From lip to lip in heaven,
Love's couch's coverlet,
Haste, haste to make her bed!
Dear offspring of pleased Venus
And jolly plump Silenus,
Haste, haste to deck the hair
Of the only sweetly fair!
See! rosy is her bower,
Her floor is all this flower;
Her bed a rosy nest
By a bed of roses pressed.
But early as she dresses,
Why fly you her bright tresses?
Ah! I have found, I fear,—
Because her cheeks are near.
|