Peace, Demades, peace shepherd, do not tempt me; The sage-taught wife may speak thus, but not practise; Rather from life than from my love exempt me, My happy love wherein my weal and wrack lies; Where chilly age first left love, and first lost her, There youth found love, liked love, and love did foster. Not as ambitious of their[C] own decay, But curious to equal your fore-deeds, So tread we now within your wonted way; We find your fruits of judgments and their seeds; We know you loved, and loving learn that lore; You scorn kind love, because you can no more. Though from this pure refiner of the thought The gleanings of your learnings have you gathered Your lives had been abortive, base and naught, Except by happy love they had been fathered; Then still the swain, for I will still avow it; They have no wit nor worth that disallow it. Then to renew the ruins of my tears Be thou no hinderer, Demades, I pray thee. If my love-sighs grow tedious in thine ears, Fly me, that fly from joy, I list not stay thee. Mourn sheep, mourn lambs, and Damon will weep by you; And when I sigh, "Come home, sweet Phillis," cry you. Come home, sweet Phillis, for thine absence causeth A flowerless prime-tide in these drooping meadows; To push his beauties forth each primrose pauseth, Our lilies and our roses like coy widows Shut in their buds, their beauties, and bemoan them, Because my Phillis doth not smile upon them. The trees by my redoubled sighs long blasted Call for thy balm-sweet breath and sunny eyes, To whom all nature's comforts are hand-fasted; Breathe, look on them, and they to life arise; They have new liveries with each smile thou lendest, And droop with me, when thy fair brow thou bendest. I woo thee, Phillis, with more earnest weeping Than Niobe for her dead issue spent; I pray thee, nymph who hast our spring in keeping, Thou mistress of our flowers and my content, Come home, and glad our meads of winter weary, And make thy woeful Damon blithe and merry. Else will I captive all my hopes again, And shut them up in prisons of despair, And weep such tears as shall destroy this plain, And sigh such sighs as shall eclipse the air, And cry such cries as love that hears my crying Shall faint and weep for grief and fall a-dying. My little world hath vowed no sun shall glad it, Except thy little world her light discover, Of which heavens would grow proud if so they had it. Oh how I fear lest absent Jove should love her! I fear it, Phillis, for he never saw one That had more heaven-sweet looks to lure and awe one.