Oh, my Nora Creina, dear! My gentle, bashful Nora Creina! In many eyes, But love in yours, my Nora Creina! Lesbia wears a robe of gold, But all so close the nymph hath laced it, Not a charm of beauty's mould Presumes to stay where nature placed it. Oh! my Nora's gown for me, That floats as wild as mountain breezes, Leaving every beauty free To sink or swell as Heaven pleases! My simple, graceful Nora Creina ! Is loveliness The dress you wear, my Nora Creina ! Lesbia hath a wit refined, But, when its points are gleaming round us, Who can tell if they're designed To dazzle merely, or to wound us? Pillowed on my Nora's heart, In safer slumber Love reposes— My mild, my artless Nora Creina! Hath no such light As warms your eyes, my Nora Creina! N THOMAS MOORE. CLIX OF CORINNA'S SINGING WHEN to her lute Corinna sings, But when she doth of mourning speak, And as her lute doth live and die, E'en from my heart the strings do break. THOMAS CAMPION. CLX LOVE'S PERVERSITY How strange a thing a lover seems Lo, where he walks and talks in dreams, The undevout with paradox! His soul, through scorn of worldly care, And musing much on all that's fair, Grows witty and fantastical; He sobs his joy and sings his grief, That plaining seems to cure his plight; For whose least pleasure he would die : Oh, cruelty, she cannot care For one to whom she's always kind! He says he's nought, but, oh, despair, If he's not Jove to her fond mind! He's jealous if she pets a dove, She must be his with all her soul; Yet 'tis a postulate in love That part is greater that the whole; And all his apprehension's stress, When he's with her, regards her hair, Her hand, a ribbon of her dress, As if his life were only there; Because she's constant, he will change, And kindest glances coldly meet, And, all the time he seems so strange, His soul is fawning at her feet; Of smiles and simple heaven grown tired, He wickedly provokes her tears, And when she weeps, as he desired, Falls slain with ecstasies of fears; He blames her, though she has no fault, Except the folly to be his; He worships her, the more to exalt The profanation of a kiss; But when his paleness shames her rose ; Its sign a flag that each way blows; Against the bars of time and fate. COVENTRY PATMORE. CLXI HEAR, ye ladies that despise, What the mighty Love has done Fear examples, and be wise: Fair Calisto was a nun; Leda, sailing on the stream To deceive the hopes of man, Love accounting but a dream, Doted on a silver swan; Danæ, in a brazen tower, e; Where no love was, loved a shower. Hear, ye ladies that are coy, What the mighty Love can do ; Fear the fierceness of the boy: The chaste moon he makes to woo; Vesta, kindling holy fires, Circled round about with spies, He can build, and once more fire. JOHN FLETCHer. |