Sleep, angry beauty, sleep and fear not me!
For who a sleeping lion dares provoke?
It shall suffice me here to sit and see
Those lips shut up that never kindly spoke:
What sight can more content a lover's mind
Than beauty seeming harmless, if not kind?
My words have charm'd her, for secure she sleeps,
Though guilty much of wrong done to my love;
And in her slumber, see! she close-eyed weeps:
Dreams often more than waking passions move. Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee: That she in peace may wake and pity me.
The sea hath many thousand sands,
The sun hath motes as many;
The sky is full of stars, and Love
As full of woes as any:
Believe me, that do know the elf,
And make no trial by thyself!
It is in truth a pretty toy
For babes to play withal:
But O the honeys of our youth
Are oft our age's gall!
Self-proof in time will make thee know
He was a prophet told thee so;
A prophet that, Cassandra-like,
Tells truth without belief;
For headstrong Youth will run his race,
Although his goal be grief:
Love's Martyr, when his heat is past,
Proves Care's Confessor at the last.
I went to her who loveth me no more,
And prayed her bear with me, if so she might; For I had found day after day too sore,
And tears that would not cease night after night.
And so I prayed her, weeping, that she bore
To let me be with her a little; yea,
To soothe myself a little with her sight,
Who loved me once, ah! many a night and day.
Then she who loveth me no more, maybe
She pitied somewhat: and I took a chain
To bind myself to her, and her to me;
Yea, so that I might call her mine again.
Lo! she forbade me not; but I and she
Fettered her fair limbs, and her neck more fair,
Chained the fair wasted white of love's domain,
And put gold fetters on her golden hair.
Oh! the vain joy it is to see her lie
Beside me once again; beyond release,
Her hair, her hand, her body, till she die,
All mine, for me to do with as I please!
For, after all, I find no chain whereby
To chain her heart to love me as before,
Nor fetter for her lips, to make them cease
From saying still she loveth me no more.
Arthur O'Shaughnessy
I loved thee once, I'll love no more,
Thine be the grief as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
He that can love unloved again,
Hath better store of love than brain:
God send me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.
Nothing could have my love o'erthrown,
If thou hadst still continued mine;
Yea, if thou hadst remained thy own,
I might perchance have yet been thine.
But thou thy freedom did recall,
That if thou might elsewhere inthrall;
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain ?
When new desires had conquered thee,
And changed the object of thy will,
It had been lethargy in me,
Not constancy, to love thee still.
Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so,
Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.
Yet do thou glory in thy choice,
Thy choice of his good fortune boast;
I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice,
To see him gain what I have lost;
The height of my disdain shall be,
To laugh at him, to blush for thee;
To love thee still, but go no more
A begging to a beggar's door.
Happy were he could finish forth his fate
In some unhaunted desert, where, obscure
From all society, from love and hate
Of worldly folk, there should he sleep secure;
Then wake again, and yield God ever praise;
Content with hip, with haws, and brambleberry;
In contemplation passing still his days,
And change of holy thoughts to make him merry:
Who, when he dies, his tomb might be the bush
Where harmless robin resteth with the thrush:
Happy were he!
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex
Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent
The poor estate scorns fortune's angry frown:
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss.
The homely house that harbours quiet rest,
The cottage that affords no pride or care,
The mean that 'grees with country music best,
The sweet consort of mirth and modest fare,
Obscured life sets down a type of bliss:
A mind content both crown and kingdom is.
Robert Greene
It was her first sweet child, her heart's delight:
And, though we all foresaw his early doom,
We kept the fearful secret out of sight;
We saw the canker, but she kiss'd the bloom.
And yet it might not be: we could not brook
To vex her happy heart with vague alarms,
To blanch with fear her fond intrepid look,
Or send a thrill through those encircling arms.
She smil'd upon him, waking or at rest:
She could not dream her little child would die
She toss'd him fondly with an upward eye:
She seem'd as buoyant as a summer spray,
That dances with a blossom on its breast,
Nor knows how soon it will be borne away.
Charles Tennyson-Turner
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I lov'd, and next to Nature, Art;
I warm'd both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Walter Savage Landor
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