English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700; Love poetry
Diaphenia, like the daffa-down-dilly,
White as the sun, fair as the lily,
Heigh-ho, how I do love thee!
I do love thee as my lambs
Are beloved of their dams:
How blest I were if thou would'st prove me!
Diaphenia, like the spreading roses,
That in thy sweets all sweets encloses,
Fair sweet, how I do love thee!
I do love thee as each flower
Loves the sun's life-giving power;
For, dead, thy breath to life might move me.
Diaphenia, like to all things blessed,
When all thy praises are expressed,
Dear joy, how I do love thee!
As the birds do love the spring,
Or the bees their careful king:
Then, in requite, sweet virgin, love me!
Henry Constable.
LOVE NOW, FOR ROSES FADE.
Look, Delia, how we esteem the half-blown rose,
The image of thy blush, and summer's honour!
Whilst yet her tender bud doth undisclose
That full of beauty Time bestows upon her:
No sooner spreads her glory in the air,
But straight her wide-blown pomp comes to decline;
She then is scorn'd, that late adorn'd the fair.
So fade the roses of those cheeks of thine!
No April can revive thy withered flowers,
Whose springing grace adorns thy glory now:
Swift speedy Time, feathered with flying hours,
Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
Then do not thou such treasure waste in vain,
But love now, whilst thou may'st be loved again.
Samuel Daniel.
EARLY LOVE.
Ah! I remember well (and how can I
But evermore remember well) when first
Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was
The flame we felt; when as we sat and sigh'd
And look'd upon each other, and conceived
Not what we ail'd--yet something we did ail;
And yet were well, and yet we were not well,
And what was our disease we could not tell.
Then would we kiss, then sigh, then look; and thus
In that first garden of our simpleness
We spent our childhood. But when years began
To reap the fruit of knowledge, ah, how then
Would she with graver looks, with sweet, stern brow,
Check my presumption and my forwardness;
Yet still would give me flowers, still would me show
What she would have me, yet not have me know.
Samuel Daniel.
LOVE IS A SICKNESS.
Love is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that most with cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies,
If not enjoyed, it sighing cries,
Heigh-ho!
Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full nor fasting.
Why so?
More we enjoy it, more it dies,
If not enjoyed, it sighing cries,
Heigh-ho!
Samuel Daniel.
THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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