TWIHAM GARDEN.
BLASTED with sighs, and surrounded with tears,
Hither I e to seek the spring,
And at mine eyes, and at mine ears,
Receive such balms as else cure every thing.
But O ! self-traitor, I d
The spider Love, which transubstantiates all,
And vert manna to gall ;
And that this place may thhly be thought
True paradise, I have the serpent brought.
Twere wholesomer for me that winter did
Benight the glory of this place,
And that a grave frost did forbid
These trees to laugh and mock me to my face ;
But that I may not this disgrace
Endure, nor yet leave loving, Love, let me
Some senseless piece of this place be ;
Make me a mandrake, so I may grow here,
Or a stone fountain weeping out my year.
Hither with crystal phials, lovers, e,
And take my tears, which are loves wine,
And try your mistress tears at home,
For all are false, that taste not just like mine.
Alas ! hearts do not in eyes shine,
Nor you more judge womens thoughts by tears,
Than by her shadow what she wears.
O perverse sex, where none is true but she,
Whos therefore true, because her truth kills me.
VALEDI TO HIS BOOK.
ILL tell thee now (dear love) what thou shalt do
To anger destiny, as she doth us ;
How I shall stay, though she eloighus,
And how posterity shall know it too ;
How thine may out-endure
Sibyls glory, and obscure
Her who from Pindar could allure,
Ahrough whose help Lu is not lame,
And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name.
Study our manuscripts, those myriads
Of letters, which have past twixt thee and me ;
Thence write our annals, and in them will be
To all whom loves subliming fire invades,
Rule and example found ;
There the faith of any ground
No schismatic will dare to wound,
That sees, how Love this grace to us affords,
To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records.
This book, as long-lived as the elements,
Or as the worlds form, this all-gravèd tome
In cypher writ, or new made idiom ;
We for Loves clergy only are instruments ;
When this book is made thus,
Should again the ravenous
Vandals and Goths invade us,
Learning were safe ; in this our universe,
Sight learn sces, spheres musigels verse.
Here Loves divines—since all divinity
Is love or wonder—may find all they seek,
Whether abstract spiritual love they like,
Their souls exhaled with what they do not see ;
Or, loth so to amuse
Faiths infirmity, they choose
Something which they may see and use ;
For, though mihe heaven, where love doth sit,
Beauty a veype may be to figure it.
Here more than in their books may lawyers find,
Both by what titles mistresses are ours,
And hative these states devours,
Transferrd from Love himself, to womankind ;
Who, though from heart and eyes,
They exact great subsidies,
Forsake him who on them relies ;
And for the cause, honour, or sce give ;
Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative.
Here statesmen—or of them, they which read—
May of their occupation find the grounds ;
Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds,
If to sider what tis, one proceed.
In both they do excel
Who the pr