Michael Drayton

As Love and I late harboured in one inn,
With Proverbs thus each other entertain.
"In love there is no lack," thus I begin:
"Fair words make fools," replieth he again.
    "Who spares to speak, doth spare to speed," quoth I.
"As well," saith he, "too forward as too slow."
"Fortune assists the boldest," I reply.
"A hasty man," quoth he, "ne'er wanted woe!"
    "Labour is light, where love," quoth I, "doth pay."
Saith he, "Light burden's heavy, if far born."
Quoth I, "The main lost, cast the by away!"
    "You have spun a fair thread," he replies in scorn.
    And having thus awhile each other thwarted,
    Fools as we met, so fools again we parted.

My fair, if thou wilt register my love,
A world of volumes shall thereof arise;
Preserve my tears, and thou thyself shall prove
A second flood down raining from mine eyes;
    Note but my sighs, and thine eyes shall behold
The sunbeams smothered with immortal smoke;
And if by thee my prayers may be enrolled,
They heaven and earth to pity shall provoke.
    Look thou into my breast, and thou shalt see
Chaste holy vows for my soul's sacrifice,
That soul, sweet maid, which so hath honoured thee,
Erecting trophies to thy sacred eyes,
    Those eyes to my heart shining ever bright,
    When darkness hath obscured each other light.

When like an eaglet I first found my love,
For that the virtue I thereof would know,
Upon the nest I set it forth to prove
If it were of that kingly kind or no;
    But it no sooner saw my sun appear,
But on her rays with open eyes it stood,
To show that I had hatched it for the air,
And rightly came from that brave mounting brood;
    And when the plumes were summed with sweet desire,
To prove the pinions it ascends the skies;
Do what I could, it needsly would aspire
To my soul's sun, those two celestial eyes.
    Thus from my breast, where it was bred alone,
    It after thee is like an eaglet flown.

You best discerned of my mind's inward eyes,
And yet your graces outwardly divine,
Whose dear remembrance in my bosom lies,
Too rich a relic for so poor a shrine;
    You, in whom nature chose herself to view,
When she her own perfection would admire;
Bestowing all her excellence on you,
At whose pure eyes Love lights his hallowed fire;
    Even as a man that in some trance hath seen
More than his wond'ring utterance can unfold,
That rapt in spirit in better worlds hath been,
So must your praise distractedly be told;
    Most of all short when I would show you most,
    In your perfections so much am I lost.

In former times, such as had store of coin,
In wars at home or when for conquests bound,
For fear that some their treasure should purloin,
Gave it to keep to spirits within the ground;
    And to attend it them as strongly tied
Till they returned. Home when they never came,
Such as by art to get the same have tried,
From the strong spirit by no means force the same.
    Nearer men come, that further flies away,
Striving to hold it strongly in the deep.
Ev'n as this spirit, so you alone do play
With those rich beauties Heav'n gives you to keep;
    Pity so left to th' coldness of your blood,
    Not to avail you nor do others good.

Define my weal, and tell the joys of heaven;
Express my woes and show the pains of hell;
Declare what fate unlucky stars have given,
And ask a world upon my life to dwell;
    Make known the faith that fortune could no move,
Compare my worth with others' base desert,
Let virtue be the touchstone of my love,
So may the heavens read wonders in my heart;
    Behold the clouds which have eclipsed my sun,
And view the crosses which my course do let;
Tell me, if ever since the world begun
So fair a rising had so foul a set?
    And see if time, if he would strive to prove,
    Can show a second to so pure a love.

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,
Nay I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
    Shakes hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
    Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes:
    Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
    From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!

When first I ended, then I first began;
Then more I travelled further from my rest.
Where most I lost, there most of all I won;
Pinèd with hunger, rising from a feast.
    Methinks I fly, yet want I legs to go,
Wise in conceit, in act a very sot,
Ravished with joy amidst a hell of woe,
What most I seem that surest am I not.
    I build my hopes a world above the sky,
Yet with the mole I creep into the earth;
In plenty I am starved with penury,
And yet I surfeit in the greatest dearth.
    I have, I want, despair, and yet desire,
    Burned in a sea of ice, and drowned amidst a fire.

Truce, gentle Love, a parley now I crave,
Methinks 'tis long since first these wars begun;
Nor thou, nor I, the better yet can have;
Bad is the match where neither party won.
    I offer free conditions of fair peace,
My heart for hostage that it shall remain.
Discharge our forces, here let malice cease,
So for my pledge thou give me pledge again.
    Or if no thing but death will serve thy turn,
Still thirsting for subversion of my state,
Do what thou canst, raze, massacre, and burn;
Let the world see the utmost of thy hate;
    I send defiance, since if overthrown,
    Thou vanquishing, the conquest is mine own.

Nothing but "No!" and "I!"[A] and "I!" and "No!"
"How falls it out so strangely?" you reply.
I tell ye, Fair, I'll not be answered so,
With this affirming "No!" denying "I!"
I say "I love!" You slightly answer "I!"
I say "You love!" You pule me out a "No!"
I say "I die!" You echo me with "I!"
"Save me!" I cry; you sigh me out a "No!"
Must woe and I have naught but "No!" and "I!"?
No "I!" am I, if I no more can have.
Answer no more; with silence make reply,
And let me take myself what I do crave;
    Let "No!" and "I!" with I and you be so,
    Then answer "No!" and "I!" and "I!" and "No!"

How many paltry, foolish, painted things,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding sheet!
    Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise;
    Virgins and matrons reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much delighted with thy story,
That they shall grieve they lived not in these times,
To have seen thee, their sex's only glory.
    So shalt thou fly above the vulgar throng,
    Still to survive in my immortal song.

Love, in a humour, played the prodigal,
And bade my senses to a solemn feast;
Yet more to grace the company withal,
Invites my heart to be the chiefest guest.
    No other drink would serve this glutton's turn,
But precious tears distilling from mine eyne,
Which with my sighs this epicure doth burn,
Quaffing carouses in this costly wine;
    Where, in his cups, o'ercome with foul excess,
Straightways he plays a swaggering ruffian's part,
And at the banquet in his drunkenness,
Slew his dear friend, my kind and truest heart.
    A gentle warning, friends, thus may you see,
    What 'tis to keep a drunkard company!

There's nothing grieves me but that age should haste,
That in my days I may not see thee old;
That where those two clear sparkling eyes are placed,
Only two loopholes that I might behold;
    That lovely archèd ivory-polished brow
Defaced with wrinkles, that I might but see;
Thy dainty hair, so curled and crispèd now,
Like grizzled moss upon some agèd tree;
    Thy cheek now flush with roses, sunk and lean;
Thy lips, with age as any wafer thin!
Thy pearly teeth out of thy head so clean,
That when thou feed'st thy nose shall touch thy chin!
    These lines that now thou scornst, which should delight thee,
    Then would I make thee read but to despite thee.

To nothing fitter can I thee compare
Than to the son of some rich penny-father,
Who having now brought on his end with care,
Leaves to his son all he had heaped together.
    This new rich novice, lavish of his chest,
To one man gives, doth on another spend;
Then here he riots; yet amongst the rest,
Haps to lend some to one true honest friend.
    Thy gifts thou in obscurity dost waste:
False friends, thy kindness born but to deceive thee;
Thy love that is on the unworthy placed;
Time hath thy beauty which with age will leave thee.
    Only that little which to me was lent,
    I give thee back when all the rest is spent.

You're not alone when you are still alone;
O God! from you that I could private be!
Since you one were, I never since was one;
Since you in me, myself since out of me.
    Transported from myself into your being,
Though either distant, present yet to either;
Senseless with too much joy, each other seeing;
And only absent when we are together.
    Give me my self, and take your self again!
Devise some means but how I may forsake you!
So much is mine that doth with you remain,
That taking what is mine, with me I take you.
    You do bewitch me! O that I could fly
    From my self you, or from your own self I!

    That learned Father which so firmly proves
    The soul of man immortal and divine,
    And doth the several offices define
    Anima.    Gives her that name, as she the body moves.
    Amor.    Then is she love, embracing charity.
    Animus.    Moving a will in us, it is the mind;
    Mens.    Retaining knowledge, still the same in kind.
    Memoria.    As intellectual, it is memory.
    Ratio.    In judging, reason only is her name.
    Sensus.    In speedy apprehension, it is sense.
    Conscientia.    In right and wrong they call her conscience;
    Spiritus.    The spirit, when it to God-ward doth inflame:
    These of the soul the several functions be,
    Which my heart lightened by thy love doth see.

If he, from heaven that filched that living fire,
    Condemned by Jove to endless torment be,
    I greatly marvel how you still go free
That far beyond Prometheus did aspire.
The fire he stole, although of heavenly kind,
    Which from above he craftily did take,
    Of lifeless clods us living men to make
He did bestow in temper of the mind.
But you broke into heaven's immortal store,
    Where virtue, honour, wit, and beauty lay;
    Which taking thence, you have escaped away,
Yet stand as free as e'er you did before.
    Yet old Prometheus punished for his rape;
    Thus poor thieves suffer when the greater 'scape.

You cannot love, my pretty heart, and why?
There was a time you told me that you would,
But how again you will the same deny.
If it might please you, would to God you could!
    What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not neither;
    Nor love, nor hate! How then? What will you do?
What, will you keep a mean then betwixt either?
Or will you love me, and yet hate me too?
    Yet serves not this! What next, what other shift?
You will, and will not; what a coil is here!
I see your craft, now I perceive your drift,
And all this while I was mistaken there.
    Your love and hate is this, I now do prove you:
    You love in hate, by hate to make me love you.