Back to the page: “The Best Poems of the English Language”
A Song
Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace
Sends up my soul to seek thy face,
Thy blessed eyes breed such desire,
I die in love’s delicious Fire.
O love, I am thy Sacrifice.
Be still triumphant, blessed eyes.
Still shine on me, fair suns! that I
Still may behold, though still I die.
Though still I die, I live again;
Still longing so to be still slain,
So gainful is such loss of breath.
I die even in desire of death.
Still live in me this loving strife
Of living Death and dying Life.
For while thou sweetly slayest me
Dead to my self, I live in Thee.
An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife Who Died and were Buried Together
To these whom death again did wed
This grave’s the second marriage-bed.
For though the hand of Fate could force
‘Twixt soul and body a divorce,
It could not sever man and wife,
Because they both lived but one life.
Peace, good reader, do not weep;
Peace, the lovers are asleep.
They, sweet turtles, folded lie
In the last knot that love could tie.
Let them sleep, let them sleep on,
Till the stormy night be gone,
And the eternal morrow dawn;
Then the curtains will be drawn,
And they wake into a light
Whose day shall never die in night.
The Tear
What bright soft thing is this?
Sweet Mary, the fair eyes’ expense?
A moist spark it is,
A wat’ry diamond; from whence
The very term, I think, was found
The water of a diamond.
O ’tis not a tear,
’Tis a star about to drop
From thine eye its sphere;
The sun will stoop and take it up.
Proud will his sister be to wear
This thine eyes’ jewel in her ear.
O ’tis a tear
Too true a tear; for no sad eyne,
How sad so e’re,
Rain so true a teare as thine;
Each drop leaving a place so dear,
Weeps for itself, is its own tear.
Such a pearl as this is,
(Slipped from Aurora’s dewy breast)
The rose bud’s sweet lip kisses;
And such the rose itself, when vexed
With ungentle flames, does shed,
Sweating in too warm a bed.
Such the maiden gem,
By the wanton spring put on,
Peeps from her parent stem,
And blushes on the manly sun:
This wat’ry blossom of thy eyne,
Ripe, will make the richer wine.
Faire drop, why quak’st thou so?
’Cause thou straight must lay thy head
In the dust? o no;
The dust shall never be thy bed:
A pillow for thee will I bring,
Stuffed with down of angels’ wing.
Thus carried up on high,
(For to Heaven thou must go)
Sweetly shalt thou lie
And in soft slumbers bathe thy woe;
Till the singing orbs awake thee,
And one of their bright chorus make thee.
There thy self shalt be
An eye, but not a weeping one,
Yet I doubt of thee,
Whether th’hadst rather there have shone
An eye of Heaven; or still shine here,
In th’Heaven of Mary’s eye, a tear.