Oh, my Nora Creina, dear!

My gentle, bashful Nora Creina !
Beauty lies

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!
Yes, my Nora Creina, dear,

My simple, graceful Nora Creina !
Nature's dress

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-
Bed of peace! whose roughest part
Is but the crumpling of the roses.
Oh, my Nora Creina, dear!

My mild, my artless Nora Creina!
Wit, tho' bright,

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,
Her voice revives the leaden strings,
And doth in highest notes appear
As any challenged echo clear.

But when she doth of mourning speak,
E'en with her sighs the strings do break.

And as her lute doth live and die,
Led by her passions, so must I:
For when of pleasure she doth sing,
My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring;
But if she do of sorrow speak,

E'en from my heart the strings do break.

THOMAS CAMPION.

CLX

LOVE'S PERVERSITY

How strange a thing a lover seems
To animals that do not love!

Lo, where he walks and talks in dreams,
And flouts us with his lady's glove;
How foreign is the garb he wears;
And how his great devotion mocks
Our poor propriety, and scares

The undevout with paradox!

His soul, through scorn of worldly care,
And great extremes of sweet and gall,
And musing much on all that's fair,

Grows witty and fantastical;

He sobs his joy and sings his grief,
And evermore finds such delight
In simple picturing his relief,

That plaining seems to cure his plight;
He makes his sorrow, when there's none;
His fancy blows both cold and hot;
Next to the wish that she'll be won,
His first hope is that she may not ;
He sues, yet deprecates consent;
Would she be captured she must fly;
She looks too happy and content,

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 ;
Health's his disease; he's never well

But when his paleness shames her rose ;
His faith's a rock-built citadel,

Its sign a flag that each way blows; His o'erfed fancy frets and fumes;

And Love, in him, is fierce, like Hate, And ruffles his ambrosial plumes

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,

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, Never dreaming loose desires,

Doting at the altar dies: Ilion, in a short hour, higher

He can build, and once more fire.

JOHN FLETCHER.

THE WINGS OF EROS

Love, like a bird, hath perched upon a spray
For thee and me to hearken what he sings.
Contented, he forgets to fly away,-

But hush! . . . remind not Eros of his wings.