Heare ye Virgins, and Ile teach,
What the times of old did preach.
Rosamond was in a Bower
Kept, as Danae in a Tower:
But yet Love (who subtile is)
Crept to that, and came to this.
Be ye lockt up like to these,
Or the rich Hesperides;
Or those Babies in your eyes,
In their Christall Nunneries;
Notwithstanding Love will win,
Or else force a passage in:
And as coy be, as you can,
Gifts will get ye, or the man.

Hear, O Self-Giver, infinite as good;
This faith, at least, my wavering heart should hold,
Nor find in dark regret its daily food,
But catch the gleam of glories yet untold.
Yea, even on earth, beloved, as love well knew,
Brief absence brought our fond returning kiss,
So let my soul to God's great world and you
Look onward with sweet pain of secret bliss; —
O sunset sky and lonely gleaming star,
Your beauty thrills me from the bound of space,
O Love, thy loveliness shows best afar,
And only Heaven shall give thee perfect grace;

He whose active thoughts disdain
To be Captive to one foe,
And would break his single chain
Or else more would undergo;
Let him learn the art of me,
By new bondage to be free.

What tyrannick Mistresse dare
To one beauty love confine,
Who unbounded as the aire
All may court but none decline?
Why should we the Heart deny
As many objects as the Eye?

Wheresoe're I turn or move
A new passion doth detain me:

He who died at Azan sends
This to comfort all his friends:

Faithful friends! It lies, I know,
Pale and white and cold as snow:
And ye say, " Abdallah's dead! "
Weeping at the feet and head.
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your sighs and prayers;
Yet I smile and whisper this:
" I am not the thing you kiss;
Cease your tears, and let it lie;
It was mine — it is not I. "

Sweet friends! what the women lave
For its last bed of the grave,
Is a tent which I am quitting,
Is a garment no more fitting,

He that will not love, must be
My Scholar, and learn this of me:
There be in Love as many feares,
As the Summers Corne has eares:
Sighs, and sobs, and sorrowes more
Then the sand, that makes the shore:
Freezing cold, and firie heats,
Fainting swoones, and deadly sweats;
Now an Ague, then a Fever,
Both tormenting Lovers ever.
Wod'st thou know, besides all these,
How hard a woman 'tis to please?
How crosse, how sullen, and how soone
She shifts and changes like the Moone.
How false, how hollow she's in heart;

He knelt beside her pillow, in the dead watch of the night,
And he heard her gentle breathing, but her face was still and white,
And on her poor, wan cheek a tear told how the heart can weep,
And he said, “My love was weary—God bless her! she 's asleep.”

He knelt beside her gravestone in the shuddering autumn night,
And he heard the dry grass rustle, and his face was thin and white,
And through his heart the tremor ran of grief that cannot weep,
And he said, “My love was weary—God bless her! she 's asleep.”

He is stark mad, who ever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say,
I saw a flask of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come!
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;
They come to us, but us Love draws,
He swallows us, and never chaws:

He hears with gladdened heart the thunder
Peal, and loves the falling dew;
He knows the earth above and under —
Sits and is content to view.

He sits beside the dying ember,
God for hope and man for friend,
Content to see, glad to remember,
Expectant of the certain end.

Have I spoken too much or not enough of love?
Who can tell?

But we who do not drug ourselves with lies
Know, with how deep a pathos, that we have
Only the warmth and beauty of this life
Before the blankness of the unending gloom.
Here for a little while we see the sun
And smell the grape-vines on the terraced hills,
And sing and weep, fight, starve and feast, and love
Lips and soft breasts too sweet for innocence.
And in this little glow of mortal life—
Faint as one candle in a large cold room—

1. Hard heart of mine, O that the Lord Would
2. I hear the heavenly pilgrims tell Their
this hard heart subdue! O come thou blest life
sins are all forgiven; And while on earth their
giving word, And form my soul anew.
bodies dwell, Their souls enjoy a heaven.

3. The Christians sing redeeming love,
And talk of joys divine;
And soon they say in realms above,
In glory they shall shine.

4. But, ah! 'tis all an unknown tongue,
I never knew that love;
I cannot sing that heavenly song,
Nor tell of joys above.