Skip to main content

94. To His Mistress.

Choose me your valentine,
Next let us marry--
Love to the death will pine
If we long tarry.

Promise, and keep your vows,
Or vow ye never--
Love's doctrine disallows
Troth-breakers ever.

You have broke promise twice,
Dear, to undo me,
If you prove faithless thrice
None then will woo ye.

56. The Vision To Electra.

I dreamed we both were in a bed
Of roses, almost smothered:
The warmth and sweetness had me there
Made lovingly familiar,
But that I heard thy sweet breath say,
Faults done by night will blush by day.
I kissed thee, panting, and, I call
Night to the record! that was all.
But, ah! if empty dreams so please,
Love give me more such nights as these.

44. Love's Play At Push-Pin.

Love and myself, believe me, on a day
At childish push-pin, for our sport, did play;
I put, he pushed, and, heedless of my skin,
Love pricked my finger with a golden pin;
Since which it festers so that I can prove
'Twas but a trick to poison me with love:
Little the wound was, greater was the smart,
The finger bled, but burnt was all my heart.

Push-pin, a game in which pins are pushed with an endeavor to cross
them.

42. To Love.

I'm free from thee; and thou no more shalt hear
My puling pipe to beat against thine ear.
Farewell my shackles, though of pearl they be;
Such precious thraldom ne'er shall fetter me.
He loves his bonds who, when the first are broke,
Submits his neck unto a second yoke.

38. To His Mistress Objecting To Him Neither Toying Or Talking.

You say I love not, 'cause I do not play
Still with your curls, and kiss the time away.
You blame me too, because I can't devise
Some sport to please those babies in your eyes:
By love's religion, I must here confess it,
The most I love when I the least express it.
Small griefs find tongues: full casks are ever found
To give (if any, yet) but little sound.
Deep waters noiseless are; and this we know,
That chiding streams betray small depth below.
So, when love speechless is, she doth express
A depth in love and that depth bottomless.