Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets: Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.
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Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets: Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.
English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700; English wit and humor; Songs, English -- Texts
3. _Sabina_ and _Camilla_ share
An equal interest in care,
Fear hath each brest
Possest.
In different Fortunes, one pure flame
Makes their unhappiness the same.
Love begets fear, fear grief creates,
Passion still passion animates,
Love will be love in all estates:
His power still is one
Whether in hope or in possession.
[p. 113.]
_A Song._
1. To Arms! to Arms! the Heroes cry,
A glorious Death, or Victory.
Beauty and Love, although combin’d,
And each so powerful alone,
Cannot prevail against a mind
Bound up in resolution.
Tears their weak influence vainly prove,
Nothing the daring breast can move
Honour is blind, and deaf, ev’n deaf to Love.
2. The Field! the Field! where Valour bleeds,
Spurn’d into dust by barbed steeds,
Instead of wanton Beds of Down
Is now the Scene where they must try,
To overthrow, or be o’rethrown;
Bravely to overcome, or dye.
Honour in her interest sits above
What Beauty, Prayers, or tears can move:
Were there no Honour, there would be no Love.
[p. 114.]
_A Song._
1. Beauty that it self can kill,
Through the finest temper’d steel,
Can those wounds she makes endure,
And insult it o’re the brave,
Since she knows a certain cure,
When she is dispos’d to save:
But when a Lover bleeding lies,
Wounded by other Arms,
And that she sees those harms,
For which she knows no remedies;
Then Beauty Sorrows livery wears,
And whilst she melts away in tears,
Drooping in Sorrow shews
Like Roses overcharg’d with morning dews.
2. Nor do women, though they wear
The most tender character,
Suffer in this case alone:
Hearts enclos’d with Iron Walls,
In humanity must groan
When a noble Hero falls.
Pitiless courage would not be [p. 115.]
An honour, but a shame;
Nor bear the noble name
Of valour, but barbarity;
The generous even in success
Lament their enemies distress:
And scorn it should appear
Who are the Conquer’d, with the Conqueror.
_A Song._
1. The young, the fair, the chaste, the good,
The sweet _Camilla_, in a flood
Of her own Crimson lies
A bloody, bloody sacrifice
To Death and man’s inhumane cruelties.
Weep Virgins till your sorrow swells
In tears above the Ivory Cells
That guard those Globes of light;
Drown, drown those beauties of your eyes.
Beauty should mourn, when beauty dies;
And make a general night,
To pay her innocence its Funeral rite.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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