I have a garden of my own, But so with roses overgrown And lilies, that you would it guess To be a little wilderness: And all the spring-time of the year It only loved to be there. Among the beds of lilies I Have sought it oft, where it should lie; Yet could not, till itself would rise, Find it, although before mine eyes. For in the flaxen lilies’ shade It like a bank of lilies laid. Upon the roses it would feed, Until its lips e’en seemed to bleed, And then to me ’twould boldly trip, And print those roses on my lip. But all its chief delight was still On roses thus itself to fill, And its pure virgin limbs to fold In whitest sheets of lilies cold:— Had it lived long, it would have been Lilies without—roses within. O help! O help! I see it faint And die as calmly as a saint! See how it weeps! the tears do come Sad, slowly, dropping like a gum. So weeps the wounded balsam; so The holy frankincense doth flow; The brotherless Heliades Melt in such amber tears as these. I in a golden vial will Keep these two crystal tears, and fill It, till it doth o’erflow, with mine, Then place it in Diana’s shrine. Now my sweet fawn is vanished to Whither the swans and turtles go; In fair Elysium to endure With milk-white lambs and ermines pure. O, do not run too fast, for I Will but bespeak thy grave, and die. First my unhappy statue shall Be cut in marble; and withal Let it be weeping too; but there The engraver sure his art may spare; For I so truly thee bemoan That I shall weep though I be stone, Until my tears, still dropping, wear My breast, themselves engraving there; Then at my feet shalt thou be laid, Of purest alabaster made; For I would have thine image be White as I can, though not as thee. THE DEFINITION OF LOVE MY love is of a birth as rare As ’tis, for object, strange and high; It was begotten by despair Upon impossibility. Magnanimous despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble hope could ne’er have flown But vainly flapped its tinsel wing. And yet I quickly might arrive Where my extended soul is fixed; But fate does iron wedges drive, And always crowds itself betwixt. For fate with jealous eyes does see Two perfect loves, nor lets them close; Their union would her ruin be, And her tyrannic power depose. And therefore her decrees of steel Us as the distant poles have placed (Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel), Not by themselves to be embraced, Unless the giddy heaven fall, And earth some new convulsion tear, And, us to join, the world should all Be cramped into a planisphere. As lines, so loves oblique may well Themselves in every angle greet; But ours, so truly parallel, Though infinite, can never meet.