My spotless love hovers with purest wings, About the temple of the proudest frame, Where blaze those lights, fairest of earthly things, Which clear our clouded world with brightest flame. My ambitious thoughts, confinèd in her face, Affect no honour but what she can give; My hopes do rest in limits of her grace; I weigh no comfort unless she relieve. For she, that can my heart imparadise, Holds in her fairest hand what dearest is; My Fortune’s wheel’s the circle of her eyes, Whose rolling grace deign once a turn of bliss. All my life’s sweet consists in her alone; So much I love the most Unloving one. III And yet I cannot reprehend the flight Or blame th’ attempt presuming so to soar; The mounting venture for a high delight Did make the honour of the fall the more. For who gets wealth, that puts not from the shore? Danger hath honour, great designs their fame; Glory doth follow, courage goes before; And though th’ event oft answers not the same-- Suffice that high attempts have never shame. The mean observer, whom base safety keeps, Lives without honour, dies without a name, And in eternal darkness ever sleeps.-- And therefore, _Delia_, ’tis to me no blot To have attempted, tho’ attain’d thee not. IV When men shall find thy flow’r, thy glory, pass, And thou with careful brow, sitting alone, Receivèd hast this message from thy glass, That tells the truth and says that _All is gone_; Fresh shalt thou see in me the wounds thou mad’st, Though spent thy flame, in me the heat remaining: I that have loved thee thus before thou fad’st-- My faith shall wax, when thou art in thy waning. The world shall find this miracle in me, That fire can burn when all the matter’s spent: Then what my faith hath been thyself shalt see, And that thou wast unkind thou may’st repent.-- Thou may’st repent that thou hast scorn’d my tears, When Winter snows upon thy sable hairs. V Beauty, sweet Love, is like the morning dew, Whose short refresh upon the tender green Cheers for a time, but till the sun doth show, And straight ’tis gone as it had never been. Soon doth it fade that makes the fairest flourish, Short is the glory of the blushing rose; The hue which thou so carefully dost nourish, Yet which at length thou must be forced to lose. When thou, surcharged with burthen of thy years, Shalt bend thy wrinkles homeward to the earth; And that, in Beauty’s Lease expired, appears The Date of Age, the Calends of our Death-- But ah, no more!--this must not be foretold, For women grieve to think they must be old. VI