My love is full of noble pride,

Nor can it e'er submit

To let that fop, Discretion, ride
In triumph over it.

False friends I have, as well as you,

Who daily counsel me Fame and ambition to pursue, And leave off loving thee.

But when the least regard I show
To fools who thus advise,
May I be dull enough to grow

As miserably wise.

CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL of Dorset

CXIX

TAKE, O take those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn : But my kisses bring again,

Bring again,

Seals of love, but sealed in vain,

Sealed in vain.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

CXX

I PRYTHEE send me back my heart,
Since I can not have thine :

For if from yours you will not part,
Why then should'st thou have mine?

Yet now I think on't, let it lie;

To find it were in vain,
For thou'st a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.

Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together?
Oh Love! where is thy sympathy,

If thus our breasts thou sever?

But love is such a mystery,

I cannot find it out:

For when I think I'm best resolved,

I then am in most doubt.

Then farewell care, and farewell woe,

I will no longer pine;

For I'll believe I have her heart

As much as she has mine.

SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

CXXI

KISSING USURY

BIANCHA, let

Me pay the debt

I owe thee for a kiss

Thou lend'st to me;

And I to thee

Will render ten for this.

If thou wilt say
Ten will not pay

For that so rich a one,
I'll clear the sum

If it will come
Unto a million.

By this, I guess,

Of happiness

Who has a little measure,

He must of right

To th' utmost mite

Make payment for his pleasure.

ROBERT HERRICK.

CXXII

CUPID and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses, Cupid paid;
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then, down he throws

The coral of his lip, the rose

Growing on's cheek (but none knows how)
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes;
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.

O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall (alas !) become of me?

JOHN LYLY.

CXXIII

You that do search for every purling spring

Which from the ribs of old Parnassus flows,
And every flower, not sweet perhaps, which grows
Near thereabouts, into your posy wring;

Ye that do dictionary's method bring

Into your rhymes, running in rattling rows;
You that poor Petrarch's long-deceased woes
With new-born sighs and denizen'd wit do sing;

You take wrong ways; those far-fetch'd helps be such
As do betray a want of inward touch,

And sure, at length stol❜n goods do come to light:
But if, both for your love and skill, your name
You seek to nurse at fullest breasts of Fame,
Stella behold, and then begin to endite.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

CXXIV

THE FAIR SINGER

To make a final conquest of all me,
Love did compose so sweet an enemy,
In whom both beauties to my death agree,
Joining themselves in fatal harmony,
That, while she with her eyes my heart does bind,
She with her voice might captivate my mind.

I could have fled from one but singly fair;
My disentangled soul itself might save,
Breaking the curlèd trammels of her hair;
But how should I avoid to be her slave,
Whose subtle art invisibly can wreathe
My fetters of the very air I breathe?

It had been easy fighting in some plain,

Where victory might hang in equal choice; But all resistance against her is vain,

Who has the advantage both of eyes and voice : And all my forces needs must be undone,

She having gainèd both the wind and sun.

ANDREW MARVELL.

CXXV

LOVE'S IDOLATRY

WHAT you do,

Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,

I'd have you do it ever : when you sing,

I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;

Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,

To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you

A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own
No other function: each your doing,

So singular in each particular,

Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,
That all your acts are queens.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.