Esparsa

Clouded vision, light obscure,
Moody glory, living death,
Fortune that cannot endure,
Fickle weeping, joy a breath,
Bitter-sweet and sweet unsure,
Peace and anger, sudden crossed,
Such is love, its trappings sure
Decked with glory for its cost.

To His Eyes

Eyes, betrayers of the soul, hunters of new loves, ever caught in the snares of Aphrodite, you seize another Love, as if sheep should seize a wolf or a crow a scorpion or ashes be put on a glowing fire!
Do what you will. But why pour out streaming tears when you return immediately to the same fetters?
You are burned in beauty; you are consumed from below; Love is the great chef of the soul!

To a Blinde Man in Love

MARINO

Lover than Love more blinde, whose bold thoughts dare
Fix on a Woman is both young and fair:
If Argus with a hundred Eyes not one
Could guard, hop'st thou to keep thine, who hast none?

Answer

I'm blinde, 'tis true, but in Loves rules, defect
Of sence, is aided by the Intellect.
And senses by each other are suppli'd,
The touch enjoyes what's to the sight deni'd.

The Vigil

Already the soft dawn — and sleepless on the threshold Damis breathes out what little life is left him, for he looked at Heraclitus and under the rays of those eyes he was as wax upon hot charcoal.
Most unhappy Damis, rise up and I who have also a wound from Love will mingle my tears with yours.

Was This the Face That Loved a Thousand Things?

O thou that singst so sweet a song
Born of the joyousness of strife,
When thou sayst that, wert never wrong-
Er in thy life.

The bard who loves a thousand things
Can give himself to lofty rhyme;
He has, to smite the lyric strings,
A lot of time.

But, loveliest of the laureates,
As to thyself is surely known,
No time hath he who concentrates

Quartette

Life's an iridescent bubble.
Love's another name for trouble.
Fact and fiction
Bring conviction
Love is prose and pain.
But it's just as true that sorrow
Here to-day is gone to-morrow.
After showers
Follow flowers —
Sunshine after rain.

At the end of every love-tale
Howsoe'er begun,
Everything will turtle-dovetail
When the story's done.

This the moral we've been learning:
Long the lane that has no turning.
Every story
Amatory
Proves the proverb true.

A Conceit

Aphrodite denied that Love was her child when she saw Antiochus, another Love among the young men. Cherish this new love, O young man, for this boy is a Love greater than Eros.

A Complaint against Cupid That He Never Made Him in Love

How many of thy Captives (Love) complaine
Thou yoak'st thy slaves in too severe a chaine?
I 'have heard 'em their Poetique malice shew,
To curse thy Quiver, and blaspheme thy bow.
Calling thee boy, and blind; threatning the rod;
Prophanely swearing that thou art no God.
Or if thou be; not from the starry place;
But born below, and of the Stygian race.
But yet these Atheists that thy shafts dislike,
Thou canst be freindly to, and daigne to strike.
This on his Cloris spends his thoughts and time;

Love's Crime

Eros, pity my entreating Muse and lull my sleepless yearning for Heliodorus. Now by your bow! your bow which does not harm others, but scatters winged arrows against me — if you kill me I will have these words written on my tomb:
" Friend, see the blood-guiltiness of Eros! "

Delay

Delay ? Alas there cannot be
To Love a greater Tyrannie:
Those cruel Beauties that have slain
Their Votaries by their disdain,
Or studied torments, sharp and witty,
Will be recorded for their pitty,
And after-ages be misled
To think them kind, when this is spred.
Of deaths the speediest is despair,
Delayes the slowest tortures are;
Thy cruelty at once destroyes,
But Expectation starves my Joyes.
Time and Delay , may bring me past
The power of Love to cure, at last;

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