| MY Love is of a birth as rare | |
| As 'tis for object strange and high: | |
| It was begotten by despair | |
| Upon Impossibility. | |
| |
| Magnanimous Despair alone | 5 |
| Could show me so divine a thing, | |
| Where feeble Hope could ne'r have flown | |
| But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing. | |
| |
| And yet I quickly might arrive | |
| Where my extended Soul is fixt, | 10 |
| But Fate does Iron wedges drive, | |
| And alwaies crouds it self betwixt. | |
| |
| For Fate with jealous Eye does see | |
| Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close: | |
| Their union would her ruine be, | 15 |
| And her Tyrannick pow'r depose. | |
| |
| And therefore her Decrees of Steel | |
| Us as the distant Poles have plac'd, | |
| (Though Loves whole World on us doth wheel) | |
| Not by themselves to be embrac'd. | 20 |
| |
| Unless the giddy Heaven fall, | |
| And Earth some new Convulsion tear; | |
| And, us to joyn, the World should all | |
| Be cramp'd into a Planisphere. | |
| |
| As Lines so Loves oblique may well | 25 |
| Themselves in every Angle greet: | |
| But ours so truly Paralel, | |
| Though infinite can never meet. | |
| |
| Therefore the Love which us doth bind, | |
| But Fate so enviously debarrs, | 30 |
| Is the Conjunction of the Mind, | |
| And Opposition of the Stars. | |
| |
