| |
| FIE, fie, you sons of Pallas, what mad rage | |
| Makes you contend, that Love’s or God or page? | |
| He that admires, his weakness doth confess, | |
| For as love greater grows, so he grows less. | |
| He that disdains, what honour wins thereby, | 5 |
| That he feels not, or triumphs on a fly? | |
| If love with queasy pain thy stomach move, | |
| So will a slut whom none dare touch or love. | |
| If it with sacred strains do thee inspire | |
| Of poetry, so we may want admire. | 10 |
| If it thee valiant make, his rival Hate | |
| Can outdo that, and make men desperate. | |
| Yielding to us, all women conquer us, | |
| By gentleness we are betrayed thus. | |
| We will not strive with love that’s a she beast; | 15 |
| But playing we are bound, and yield in jest. | |
| As in a cobweb toil a fly hath been | |
| Undone, so have I some faint lover seen. | |
| Love cannot take away our strength, but tame, | |
| And we less feel the thing than fear the name, | 20 |
| Love is a temperate bath; he that feels more | |
| Heat or cold there, was hot or cold before. | |
| But as sunbeams, which would but nourish, burn | |
| Drawn into hollow crystal, so we turn | |
| To fire her beauty’s lustre willingly, | 25 |
| By gathering it in our false treacherous eye. | |
| Love is nor you, nor you, but [aye a calm,] 1 | |
| Sword to the stiff, unto the wounded balm. | |
| Praise nothing adds, if it be infinite; | |
| If it be nothing, who can lessen it? | 30 |
