ELEGIES.

THE PERFUME.

ONCE, and but once, found in thy company,
All thy supposed 'scapes are laid on me;
And as a thief at bar is question'd there
By all the men that have been robb'd that year,
So am I (by this traitorous means surpris'd)
By the hydroptic father catechis'd.

Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a cockatrice;

Though he hath oft sworn, that he would remove
Thy beauty's beauty, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods, if I with thee were seen;
Yet close and secret, as our souls, we've been.
Though thy immortal mother, which doth lie
Still buried in her bed, yet will not die,
Takes this advantage to sleep out day-light,
And watch thy entries and returns all night;
And, when she takes thy hand, and would seem kind,
Doth search what rings and armlets she can find;
And kissing notes the colour of thy face,

And fearing lest thou'rt swoln, doth thee embrace;
And, to try if thou long, doth name strange meats,
And notes thy paleness, blushes, sighs, and sweats,
And politicly will to thee confess

The sins of her own youth's rank lustiness;

Yet love these sorc'ries did remove, and move
Thee to gull thine own mother for my love.
Thy little brethren, which like fairy sprites
Oft skipp'd into our chamber those sweet nights,
And kiss'd and dandled on thy father's knee,
Were brib'd next day; to tell what they did see:
The grim eight foot high iron-bound serving-man,
That oft names God in oaths, and only then,
He that, to bar the first gate, doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride,
Which, if in Hell no other pains there were,
Makes me fear Hell, because he must be there:
Though by thy father he were hir'd to this,
Could never witness any touch or kiss.

HERE, take my picture; though I bid farewell :
Thine in my heart, where my soul dwells, shall dwell,
'Tis like me now, but, I dead, 'twill be more,
When we are shadows both, than 'twas before.
When weather-beaten I come back; my hand
Perhaps with rude oars torn, or sun-beams tann'd
My face and breast of hair-cloth, and my head
With care's harsh sudden hoariness o'erspread;
My body a sack of bones, broken within,
And powder's blue stains scatter'd on my
If rival fools tax thee t' have lov'd a man
So foul and coarse, as, oh! I may seem then,
This shall say what I was: and thou shalt say,
"Do his hurts reach me? doth my worth decay?

skin:

Or do they reach his judging mind, that he
Should now love less, what he did love to see?
That which in him was fair and delicate,

Was but the milk, which in love's childish state
Did nurse it who now is grown strong enough
To feed on that, which, to weak tastes, seems tough."

ELEGY.

NATURE'S lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, oh! how thou dost prove
Too subtle! Fool, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand:
Nor could'st thou judge the difference of the air
Of sighs, and say, this lies, this sounds despair :
Nor by th' eye's water know a malady
Desperately hot, or changing feverously.
I had not taught thee then the alphabet
Of flowers, how they, devisefully being set
And bound up, might with speechless secresy
Deliver errands mutely and mutually.
Remember, since all thy words us'd to be
To every suitor, "I, if my friends agree;"
Since household charms thy husband's name to
teach

Were all the love tricks that thy wit could reach:
And since an hour's discourse could scarce have

made

One answer in thee, and that ill array'd
In broken proverbs and torn sentences;
Thou art not by so many duties his,

(That, from the world's common having sever'd

thee,

Inlaid thee, neither to be seen nor see)

As mine: who have with amorous delicacies
Refin'd thee into a blissful paradise.

Thy graces and good works my creatures be,
I planted knowledge and life's tree in thee:
Which, oh! shall strangers taste? Must I, alas!
Frame and enamel plate, and drink in glass?
Chafe wax for other's seals? break a colt's force,
And leave him then being made a ready horse?

UPON THE LOSS OF HIS MISTRESS'S CHAIN, FOR WHICH

HE MADE SATISFACTION.

NOT, that in colour it was like thy hair,
Armlets of that thou may'st still let me wear:
Nor, that thy hand it oft embrac'd and kiss'd,
For so it had that good, which oft I miss'd:
Nor for that silly old morality,

That as these links were knit, our loves should be;

Iourn I, that I thy sevenfold chain have lost:

Nor for the luck's sake; but the bitter cost.
O! shall twelve righteous angels, which as yet
No leaven of vile solder did admit;

Nor yet by any way have stray'd or gone
From the first state of their creation;
Angels, which Heaven commanded to provide
All things to me, and be my faithful guide;
To gain new friends, t' appease old enemies;
To comfort my soul, when I lie or rise:

VOL. IV.

Shall these twelve innocents by thy severe
Sentence (dread judge) my sinʼs great burden bear?
Shall they be damn'd, and in the furnace thrown,
And punish'd for offences not their own?
They save not me, they do not ease my pains,
When in that Hell they're burnt and ty'd in chains:
Were they but crowns of France, I cared not,
For most of them their natural country rot
I think possesseth, they come here to us,
So pale, so lame, so lean, so ruinous;
And howsoe'er French kings most Christian be,
Their crowns are circumcis'd most Jewishly;
Or were they Spanish stamps still travelling,
That are become as catholic as their king,
Those unlick'd bear-whelps, unfil'd pistolets,
That (more than cannon-shot) avails or lets,
Which, negligently left unrounded, look
Like many angled figures in the book

Of some dread conjurer, that would enforce
Nature, as these do justice, from her course.
Which, as the soul quickens head, feet, and heart,
As streams like veins run through th' Earth's ev'ry
Visit all countries, and have slily made

[part,

Gorgeous France ruin'd; ragged and decay'd
Scotland, which knew no state, proud in one day;
And mangled seventeen-headed Belgia:

Or were it such gold as that, wherewithall
Almighty chymics from each mineral
Having by subtle fire a soul out-pull'd,

Are dirtily and desperately gull'd:

I would not spit to quench the fire they're in,
For they are guilty of much heinous sin.
But shall my harmless angels perish? Shall
I lose my guard, my ease, my food, my all?