Love’s Contentment
Come, my Clarinda, we’ll consume
Our joys no more at this low rate:
More glorious titles let’s assume,
And love according to our state;
For if contentment wears a crown,
Which never tyrant could assail,
How many monarchs put we down
In our utopian commonweal?
As princes rain down golden showers
On those in whom they take delight,
So in this happier court of ours
Each is the other’s favourite.
Our privacies no eye dwells near,
But unobservèd we embrace,
And no sleek courtier’s pen is there
To set down either time or place;
No midnight fears disturb our bliss,
Unless a golden dream awake us.
For care, we know not what it is,
Unless to please doth careful make us.
We fear no enemies’ invasion;
Our counsel’s wise and politic:
With timely force, if not persuasion,
We cool the home-bred schismatic.
All discontent thus to remove
What monarch boasts, but thou and I?
In this content we live and love,
And in this love resolve to die.
That when our souls together fled
One urn shall our mixed dust enshrine.
In golden letters may be read
‘Here lie content’s late King and Queen.’