If you can count the leaves of the trees,
Or the foaming waves of the untamed seas,
Then will I entrust to you alone
To reckon the amours I have known.
Take at Athens twenty mistresses,
And then you may add fifteen to these.
Put me a countless number down
At Corinth, that famed Achæan town,
Where the women are so dangerously fair
From falling in love one can't escape there.
My Lesbian I will now indite,
Next Ionian and Carian; and you may write
Many at Rhodes, all my heart's delight.
The sum when computed carefully

Say, my lovely star! O say,
Art thou gloomy—art thou gay?

Art thou gloomy—O be bright—
Pour on me thy streams of light!

Pour thy streams of light on me,
And awaken memory.

Wilt thou love God, as he thee! then digest,
My Soule, this wholsome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by Angels waited on
In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy brest.
The Father having begot a Sonne most blest,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er begonne)
Hath deign'd to chuse thee by adoption,
Coheire to'his glory,'and Sabbaths endlesse rest.
And as a robb'd man, which by search doth finde
His stolne stuffe sold, must lose or buy'it againe:
The Sonne of glory came downe, and was slaine,
Us whom he'had made, and Satan stolne, to unbinde.

Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt
To Nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly on heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee God; so streams do show their head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, when as thou
Dost woo my soul for hers; offering all thine:
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,

Young Spring, with opening flowers,
Was bright'ning vale and lea;
While Love, 'mid budding bowers,
Woke sweet melody:
When by Dee's noble river
I strayed in happy glee,
And left my heart for ever
In fair Banchory.
O Banchory! fair Banchory!
How dear that happy day to me,
I wandered by the banks o' Dee,
And won the flower o' Banchory

How was't that I, a rover,
So reckless and so free,
Became a constant lover
By flowing Dee?
Because, like Spring, my charmer,
When fondly, kindly press'd,
Became like Summer, warmer,

Youth hath its joys love what are they
Charms are not ever young
Spring is as fair but what is May
Tis but a cuckoos song
A nightingales the summer is
Altho so gay & proud
& when the swallow flies away
She leaves her in her shroud

Of our love
How can any man know?
The fine lawn
Pillow alone,
If (anything) knows, can know.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair linèd slippers for the cold,

Like to a ring without a finger,
Or a bell without a ringer,
Like a horse was never ridden,
Or a feast and no guest bidden,
Like a well without a bucket,
Or a rose if no man pluck it,
Just such as these may she be said
That lives, not loves, but dies a maid.

The ring, if worn, the finger decks;
The bell pulled by the ringer speaks;
The horse does ease if he be ridden;
The feast doth please if guest be bidden;
The bucket draws the water forth;
The rose, when plucked, is still most worth:
Such is the virgin in my eyes

When the beauteous Spring I see,
Glad and free,
Making young the sea and earth,
Then the light of day above
And our love
Seem but newly brought to birth.

When the sky of deeper blue
Lights anew
Lands more beautiful and green,
Love, with witching looks for darts,
Wars on hearts,
Winning them for his demesne.

Scattering his arrows dire
Tipped with fire,
He doth bring beneath his sway
Men and birds and beasts for slaves—
And the waves
To his power obeisance pay. . . .

Nature, for Love's triumphing,
In the Spring