We read of kings and gods that kindly took / A pitcher fill'd with water from the brook ; / But I have daily tender'd without thanks / Rivers of tears that overflow their banks. / A slaughter'd bull will appease angry Jove, / A horse the Sun, a lamb the god of love, / But she disdains the spotless sacrifice / Of a pure heart, that at her altar lies. / Vesta is not displeased, if her chaste urn / Do with repaired fuel ever burn ; / But my saint frowns, though to her honour'd name / I consecrate a never-dying flame. / Th' Assyrian king did none i' th' furnace throw / But those that to his image did not bow ; / With bended knees I daily worship her, / Yet she consumes her own idolater. / Of such a goddess no times leave record, / That burnt the temple where she was adored.

I was foretold, your rebell sex, / Nor love, nor pitty knew; / And with what scorn you use to vex / Poor hearts that humbly sue; / Yet I believ’d, to crown our pain, / Could we the fortress win, / The happy Lover sure should gain / A Paradise within: / I thought Loves plagues, like Dragons sate, / Only to fright us at the gate. / But I did enter, and enjoy / What happy Lovers prove; / For I could kiss, and sport, and toy, / And taste those sweets of love; / Which had they but a lasting state, / Or if in Celia’s brest / The force of love might not abate, / Jove were too mean a guest. / But now her breach of faith, farre more / Afflicts, than did her scorn before. / Hard fate! to have been once possest, / As victor, of a heart / Atchiev’d with labour, and unrest, / And then forc’d to depart. / If the stout Foe will not resigne / When I besiege a Town, / I lose, but what was never mine; / But he that is cast down / From enjoy’d beauty, feels a woe, / Only deposed Kings can know.

In Nature’s pieces still I see / Some error, that might mended be; / Something my wish could still remove, / Alter or add; but my fair love / Was fram’d by hands far more divine / For she hath ev’ry beauteous line; / Yet I had been far happier, / Had Nature, that made me, made her. / Then likeness might, that love creates, / Have made her love what now she hates; / Yet, I confess, I cannot spare / From her just shape the smallest hair; / Nor need I beg from all the store / Pf heaven for her one beauty more. / She hath too much divinity for me; / Ye gods, teach her some more humanity.

Go thou gentle whispering wind, / Bear this sigh; and if thou find / Where my cruel fair doth rest, / Cast it in her snowy breast, / So, enflam'd by my desire, / It may set her heart a-fire. / Those sweet kisses thou shalt gain, / Will reward thee for thy pain: / Boldly light upon her lip, / There suck odours, and thence skip / To her bosom; lastly fall / Down, and wander over all: / Range about those ivory hills, / From whose every part distills / Amber dew; there spices grow, / There pure streams of nectar flow; / There perfume thyself, and bring / All those sweets upon thy wing: / As thou return'st, change by thy power, / Every weed into a flower; / Turn each thistle to a vine, / Make the bramble eglantine. / For so rich a booty made, / Do but this, and I am paid. / Thou canst with thy powerful blast, / Heat apace, and cool as fast: / Thou canst kindle hidden flame, / And again destroy the same; / Then for pity, either stir / Up the fire of love in her, / That alike both flames may shine, / Or else quite extinguish mine.

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 aged 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.

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 doth 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, / Fixed become as in their sphere. / Ask me no more if east or west / The phnix builds her spicy nest; / For unto you at last she flies, / And in your fragrant bosom dies.

Can we not force from widow'd poetry, / Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy / To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust, / Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust, / Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower / Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour, / Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay / Upon thy ashes, on the funeral day? / Have we no voice, no tune? Didst thou dispense / Through all our language, both the words and sense? / 'Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain / And sober Christian precepts still retain, / Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame, / Grave homilies and lectures, but the flame / Of thy brave soul (that shot such heat and light / As burnt our earth and made our darkness bright, / Committed holy rapes upon our will, / Did through the eye the melting heart distil, / And the deep knowledge of dark truths so teach / As sense might judge what fancy could not reach) / Must be desir'd forever. So the fire / That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic quire, / Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath, / Glow'd here a while, lies quench'd now in thy death. / The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds / O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds / Of servile imitation thrown away, / And fresh invention planted; thou didst pay / The debts of our penurious bankrupt age; / Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage / A mimic fury, when our souls must be / Possess'd, or with Anacreon's ecstasy, / Or Pindar's, not their own; the subtle cheat / Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat / Of two-edg'd words, or whatsoever wrong / By ours was done the Greek or Latin tongue, / Thou hast redeem'd, and open'd us a mine / Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line / Of masculine expression, which had good / Old Orpheus seen, or all the ancient brood / Our superstitious fools admire, and hold / Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold, / Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more / They each in other's dust had rak'd for ore. / Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time, / And the blind fate of language, whose tun'd chime / More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayst claim / From so great disadvantage greater fame, / Since to the awe of thy imperious wit / Our stubborn language bends, made only fit / With her tough thick-ribb'd hoops to gird about / Thy giant fancy, which had prov'd too stout / For their soft melting phrases. As in time / They had the start, so did they cull the prime / Buds of invention many a hundred year, / And left the rifled fields, besides the fear / To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands / Of what is purely thine, thy only hands, / (And that thy smallest work) have gleaned more / Than all those times and tongues could reap before. / But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be / Too hard for libertines in poetry; / They will repeal the goodly exil'd train / Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign / Were banish'd nobler poems; now with these, / The silenc'd tales o' th' Metamorphoses / Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page, / Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age / Turn ballad rhyme, or those old idols be / Ador'd again, with new apostasy. / Oh, pardon me, that break with untun'd verse / The reverend silence that attends thy hearse, / Whose awful solemn murmurs were to thee, / More than these faint lines, a loud elegy, / That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence / The death of all the arts; whose influence, / Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies, / Gasping short-winded accents, and so dies. / So doth the swiftly turning wheel not stand / In th' instant we withdraw the moving hand, / But some small time maintain a faint weak course, / By virtue of the first impulsive force; / And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile / Thy crown of bays, oh, let it crack awhile, / And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes / Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes. / I will not draw the envy to engross / All thy perfections, or weep all our loss; / Those are too numerous for an elegy, / And this too great to be express'd by me. / Though every pen should share a distinct part, / Yet art thou theme enough to tire all art; / Let others carve the rest, it shall suffice / I on thy tomb this epitaph incise: / Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit / The universal monarchy of wit; / Here lie two flamens, and both those, the best, / Apollo's first, at last, the true God's priest.

This little vault, this narrow room, / Of Love and Beauty is the tomb; / The dawning beam, that ‘gan to clear / Our clouded sky, lies darken’d 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.

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 / Fixed become as in their sphere. / Ask me no more if east or west / The Phoenix builds her spicy nest; / For unto you at last she flies, / And in your fragrant bosom dies.

Mark how the bashful morn in vain / Courts the amorous marigold, / With sighing blasts and weeping rain, / Yet she refuses to unfold. / But when the planet of the day / Approacheth with his powerful ray, / The she spreads, then she receives / His warmer beams into her virgin leaves. / So shalt thou thrive in love, fond boy; / If thy tears and sighs discover / Thy grief, thou never shalt enjoy / The just reward of a bold lover. / But when with moving accents thou / Shalt constant faith and service vow, / Thy Celia shall receive those charms / With open ears, and with unfolded arms.