THOMAS CAREW

ASK me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose; For in your beauty’s orient deep These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day; For in pure love heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale when May is past; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters and keeps warm her note. Ask me no more where those stars ’light That downwards fall in dead of night For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixèd become as in their sphere. Ask me no more if east or west The Phœnix builds her spicy nest; For unto you at last she flies, And in your fragrant bosom dies.

IF the quick spirits in your eye Now languish and anon must die; If every sweet and every grace Must fly from that forsaken face; Then, Celia, let us reap our joys Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys. Or if that golden fleece must grow. For ever free from agèd snow; If those bright suns must know no shade, Nor your fresh beauties ever fade; Then fear not, Celia, to bestow What, still being gather’d, still must grow. Thus either Time his sickle brings In vain, or else in vain his wings.

WHEN thou, poor Excommunicate From all the joys of Love, shalt see The full reward and glorious fate Which my strong faith shall purchase me, Then curse thine own inconstancy! A fairer hand than thine shall cure That heart which thy false oaths did wound; And to my soul a soul more pure Than thine shall by Love’s hand be bound, And both with equal glory crown’d. Then shalt thou weep, entreat, complain To Love, as I did once to thee; When all thy tears shall be as vain As mine were then: for thou shalt be Damn’d for thy false apostasy.

HE that loves a rosy cheek, Or a coral lip admires, Or from star-like eyes doth seek Fuel to maintain his fires: As old Time makes these decay, So his flames must waste away. But a smooth and steadfast mind, Gentle thoughts and calm desires, Hearts with equal love combined, Kindle never-dying fires. Where these are not, I despise Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.

KNOW, Celia, since thou art so proud, ’Twas I that gave thee thy renown. Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd Of common beauties lived unknown, Had not my verse extoll’d thy name, And with it imp’d the wings of Fame. That killing power is none of thine; I gave it to thy voice and eyes; Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine; Thou art my star, shin’st in my skies; Then dart not from thy borrow’d sphere Lightning on him that fix’d thee there.

TEMPT me with such affrights no more, Lest what I made I uncreate; Let fools thy mystic form adore, I know thee in thy mortal state. Wise poets, that wrapt Truth in tales, Knew her themselves through all her veils.

THE Lady Mary Villiers lies Under this stone; with weeping eyes The parents that first gave her birth, And their sad friends, laid her in earth. If any of them, Reader, were Known unto thee, shed a tear; Or if thyself possess a gem As dear to thee, as this to them, Though a stranger to this place, Bewail in theirs thine own hard case: For thou perhaps at thy return May’st find thy Darling in an urn.

THIS little vault, this narrow room, Of Love and Beauty is the tomb; The dawning beam, that ’gan to clear Our clouded sky, lies darkened here, For ever set to us: by Death Sent to enflame the World Beneath, ’Twas but a bud, yet did contain More sweetness than shall spring again; A budding Star, that might have grown Into a Sun when it had blown. This hopeful Beauty did create New life in Love’s declining state; But now his empire ends, and we From fire and wounding darts are free; His brand, his bow, let no man fear: The flames, the arrows, all lie here.