| |
| BY our first strange and fatal interview, | |
| By all desires which thereof did ensue, | |
| By our long starving 1 hopes, by that remorse | |
| Which my words masculine persuasive force | |
| Begot in thee, and by the memory | 5 |
| Of hurts, which spies and rivals threaten’d me, | |
| I calmly beg. But by thy father’s wrath, | |
| By all pains, which want and divorcement hath, | |
| I conjure thee, and all the oaths which I | |
| And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy, | 10 |
| Here I unswear, 2 and overswear them thus; | |
| Thou shall not love by ways 3 so dangerous. | |
| Temper, O fair love, love’s impetuous rage; | |
| Be my true mistress still, not my feign’d 4 page. | |
| I’ll go, and, by thy kind leave, leave behind | 15 |
| Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind | |
| Thirst to come back; O! if thou die before, | |
| My soul from other lands to thee shall soar. | |
| Thy else almighty beauty cannot move | |
| Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love, | 20 |
| Nor tame wild Boreas’ harshness; thou hast read | |
| How roughly he in pieces shivered | |
| Fair 5 Orithea, whom he swore he loved. | |
| Fall ill or good, ’tis madness to have proved | |
| Dangers unurged; feed on this flattery, | 25 |
| That absent lovers one in th’ other be. | |
| Dissemble nothing, not a boy, nor change | |
| Thy body’s habit, nor mind; be not strange | |
| To thyself only. All will spy in thy face | |
| A blushing womanly discovering grace. | 30 |
| Richly clothed apes are call’d apes, and as soon | |
| Eclipsed as bright, we call the moon the moon. | |
| Men of France, changeable chameleons, | |
| Spitals of diseases, shops of fashions, | |
| Love’s 6 fuellers, and the rightest company | 35 |
| Of players, which upon the world’s stage be, | |
| Will quickly know thee, and no less, alas! 7 | |
| Th’ indifferent Italian, as we pass | |
| His warm land, well content to think thee page, | |
| Will hunt thee with such lust, and hideous rage, | 40 |
| As Lot’s fair guests were vex’d. But none of these, | |
| Nor spongy hydroptic Dutch shall thee displease, | |
| If thou stay here. O stay here, for for thee | |
| England is only a worthy gallery, | |
| To walk in expectation, till from thence | 45 |
| Our greatest king call thee to his presence. | |
| When I am gone, dream me some happiness; | |
| Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess; | |
| Nor praise, nor dispraise me, nor bless nor curse | |
| Openly love’s force, nor in bed fright thy nurse | 50 |
| With midnight’s starlings, crying out, O! O! | |
| Nurse, O! my love is slain; I saw him go | |
| O’er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I, | |
| Assail’d, fight, taken, stabb’d, bleed, fall, and die. | |
| Augur me better chance, except dread Jove | 55 |
| Think it enough for me to have had thy love. | |
