Love’s Growth

I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure

As I had thought it was,

Because it doth endure

Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;

Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore

My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow

With more, not only be no quintessence,

But mix’d of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,

And of the sun his active vigour borrow,

Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use

To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;

But as all else, being elemented too,

Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,

Love by the spring is grown;

As in the firmament

Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,

Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,

From love’s awaken’d root do bud out now.

If, as in water stirr’d more circles be

Produced by one, love such additions take,

Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,

For they are all concentric unto thee;

And though each spring do add to love new heat,

As princes do in times of action get

New taxes, and remit them not in peace,

No winter shall abate this spring’s increase.