I fade, I faint, I famish, love!
I thirst, I starve—
Gewhillikins!
And all for my sweet saucy dear—
Her beef, her kisses, pies, & beer
My Stellakins!

What is poetry?
A thought of beauty—truth,
An emotion rife with ruth—
With love!
All rhythmically expressed,
Carefully groomed—exquisitely dressed.

fortune hathe taken away my love
my lyves joy and my soules heaven above
fortune hathe taken thee away my princes
my worldes joy and my true fantasies misteris

fortune hathe taken thee away from mee
fortune hathe taken all by takinge thee
deade to all joyes I only lyve to woe
So ys fortune becomme my fantasies foe

In vayne my Eyes, in vayne yee waste your teares
In vayne my sightes, the smoke of my dispayres
In vayne youe searche the Earthe and heaven above
In vayne youe searche for fortune keepes my love

LXI

Of purpose Love chose first for to be blind,
For he with sight of that that I behold
Vanquished had been against all godly kind.
His bow your hand and truss should have unfold
And he with me to serve had been assigned.
But for he blind and reckless would him hold
And still by chance his deadly strokes bestow,
With such as see I serve and suffer woe.

O SWEET is Love, and sweet is Lack!
But is there any charm
When Lack from round the neck of Love
Drops her languid arm?

Weary, I no longer love,
Weary, no more lack;
O for a pang, that listless Loss
Might wake, and, with a playmate's voice,
Call the tired Love back!

A placed alone is but an idle worde.
E parce E, spells nothinge but it selfe;
I yet alone male lovely thoughtes afoorde:
but O, alas, dothe plaie the frowarde elfe:
to prove the Reason of this Riddle true:
not A nor E nor O, but I and yow.

And this, then, is love's ending. It is like
The history of some fair southern clime:
Hot fires are in the bosom of the earth,
And the warmed soil puts forth its thousand flowers,
Its fruits of gold—summer's regality;
And sleep and odours float upon the air,
Making it heavy with its own delight.
At length the subterranean element
Bursts from its secret solitude, and lays
All waste before it. The red lava stream
Sweeps like a pestilence; and that which was
A garden for some fairy tale's young queen
Is one wild desert, lost in burning sand.

What hath Love with Thought to do?
Still at variance are the two.
Love is sudden, Love is rash,
Love is like the levin flash,
Comes as swift, as swiftly goes,
And his mark as surely knows.

Thought is lumpish, Thought is slow,
Weighing long 'tween yes and no;
When dear Love is dead and gone,
Thought comes creeping in anon,
And, in his deserted nest,
Sits to hold the crowner's quest.

Since we love, what need to think?
Happiness stands on a brink
Whence too easy 't is to fall
Whither 's no return at all;
Have a care, half-hearted lover,

The one
who promised
now has gone off
who knows where,
a bird flying off
at morning,
into the sky,
leaving me
in evening's wake.

You earthly Souls that court a wanton flame,
Whose pale weak influence
Can rise no higher then the humble name
And narrow laws of Sence,
Learn by our friendship to create
An immaterial fire,
Whose brightnesse Angels may admire,
But cannot emulate.

Sicknesse may fright the roses from her cheek,
Or make the Lilies fade,
But all the subtile wayes that death doth seek
Cannot my love invade:
Flames that are kindled by the eye,
Through time and age expire;
But ours that boast a reach far higher
Can nor decay, nor die.