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LOVE, any devil else but you | |
Would for a given soul give something too. | |
At court your fellows every day | |
Give th art of rhyming, huntsmanship, or play, | |
For them which were their own before; | 5 |
Only I have nothing, which gave more, | |
But am, alas! by being lowly, lower. | |
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I ask no dispensation now, | |
To falsify a tear, or sigh, or vow; 1 | |
I do not sue from thee to draw | 10 |
A non obstante on natures law; | |
These are prerogatives, they inhere | |
In thee and thine; none should forswear | |
Except that he Loves minion were. | |
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Give me thy weakness, make me blind, | 15 |
Both ways, as thou and thine, in eyes and mind; | |
Love, let me never know that this | |
Is love, or, that love childish is; | |
Let me not know that others know | |
That she knows my pains, lest that so | 20 |
A tender shame make me mine own new woe. | |
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If thou give nothing, yet thou rt just, | |
Because I would not thy first motions trust; | |
Small towns which stand stiff, till great shot | |
Enforce them, by wars law condition not; | 25 |
Such in Loves warfare is my case; | |
I may not article for grace, | |
Having put Love at last to show this face. 2 | |
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This face, by which he could command | |
And change th idolatry of any land, | 30 |
This face, which, wheresoeer it comes, | |
Can call vowd men from cloisters, dead from tombs, | |
And melt both poles at once, and store | |
Deserts with cities, and make more | |
Mines in the earth, than quarries were before. | 35 |
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For this Love is enraged with me, | |
Yet kills not; if I must example be | |
To future rebels, if th unborn | |
Must learn by my being cut up and torn, | |
Kill, and dissect me, Love; for this | 40 |
Torture against thine own end is; | |
Rackd carcasses make ill anatomies. | |