When Love flies in,
Make — make no sign;
Owl-soft his wings,
Sand-blind his eyne;
Sigh, if thou must,
But seal him thine.

Nor make no sign
If love flit out;
He'll tire of thee
Without a doubt.
Stifle thy pangs;
Thy heart resign;
And live without!

I strove with none for none was worth my strife;
Reason I loved, and next to reason, doubt;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life
And put it out.

Love is not blind. I see with single eye
Your ugliness and other women's grace.
I know the imperfection of your face, —
The eyes too wide apart, the brow too high
For beauty. Learned from earliest youth am I
In loveliness, and cannot so erase
Its letters from my mind, that I may trace
You faultless, I must love until I die.
More subtle is the sovereignty of love:
So am I caught that when I say, " Not fair, "
'Tis but as if I said, " Not here — not there —
Not risen — not writing letters. " Well I know

The wind blows out of the west,
The wind is merry and free;
It brings fair weather for us, love,
Fair weather for thee and me.

The sun shines out of the east,
And dances over the sea;
The world's aglitter for us, love,
Aglitter for thee and me.

And now the world's a-dusk,
The nest unstirred on the tree;
The fair moon hangs at its full, love,
And shineth for thee and me.

Toss not my soul, O Love, 'twixt hope and fear.
Show me some ground where I may firmly stand
Or surely fall; I care not which appear,
So one will close me in a certain band.

Take me, Assurance, to thy blissful hold,
Or thou, Despair, unto thy darkest cell.
Each hath full rest, the one in joys enrolled,
Th'other, in that he fears no more, is well.

Ye captive souls of blindfold Cyprian's boat,
Mark with advice in what estate ye stand:
Your boatman never whistles merry note,
And Folly keeping stern, still puts from land,
And makes a sport to toss you to and fro
Twixt sighing winds and surging waves of woe.

On Beauty's rock she runs you at her will,
And holds you in suspense twixt hope and fear,
Where dying oft, yet are you living still,
But such a life as death much better were.
Be therefore circumspect, and follow me,
When chance or change of manners sets you free.

Thou art too hard for me in Love:
There is no dealing with thee in that Art:
That is thy Masterpiece I see.
When I contrive and plot to prove
Something that may be conquest on my part
Thou still, O Lord, outstrippest me.

Sometimes, when as I wash, I say
And shrewdly, as I think, Lord wash my soul
More spotted than my flesh can be.
But then there comes into my way
Thy ancient baptism, which when I was foul
And knew it not, yet cleansed me.

I took a time when thou didst sleep,
Great waves of trouble combating my breast:

Senful man, bethink and see
What peine I thole for love of thee.
Night and day to thee I grede,
Hand and fotes on rode isprede.
Nailed I was to the tree,
Ded and biried, man, for thee;
All this I drey for love of man.
But werse me dot, that he ne can
To me turnen onis his eye
Than all the peine that I drye.

Women, women, love of women
Maketh bare purses with sum men.

Sum be mery, and sum be sad,
And sum be besy, and sum be bad;
Sum be wilde, by Seint Chad;
Yet all be not so,
For sum be lewed,
And sum be shrewed;
Go, shrew, whersoever ye go.

Sum be wise, and sum be fonde;
Sum be tame, I understond;
Sum will take bred at a mannes hond;
Yet all be not so.

Sum be wroth and cannot tell wherfore;
Sum be skorning evermore,
And sum be tusked like a bore;
Yet all be not so.

Sum will be dronken as a mouse;

When the nightegale singes,
The wodes waxen grene:
Lef and gras and blosme springes,
In Averil, I wene.
And love is to mine herte gon
With one spere so kene:
Night and day my blod it drinkes;
Mine herte deth me tene.

Ich have loved all this yer
That I may love na more;
Ich have siked mony sik,
Lemmon, for thine ore.
Me nis love never the ner,
And that me reweth sore.
Swete lemmon, thench on me:
Ich have loved thee yore.

Swete lemmon, I preye thee
Of love one speche.
Whil I live, in world so wide