T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Nature That Washed Her Hands
By Sir Walter Raleigh (1554?–1618)(From Harlein MS. 6917, fol. 48) NATURE that wash’d her hands in milk | |
| And had forgot to dry them, | |
| Instead of earth took snow and silk | |
| At Love’s request to try them, | |
| If she a mistress could compose | 5 |
| To please Love’s fancy out of those. | |
| Her eyes he would should be of light; | |
| A violet breath, and lips of jelly; | |
| Her hair not black, nor over-bright; | |
| And of the softest down her belly: | 10 |
| As for her inside he’ld have it | |
| Only of wantonness and wit. | |
| At Love’s entreaty such a one | |
| Nature made, but with her beauty | |
| She hath framed a heart of stone; | 15 |
| So as Love, by ill destiny, | |
| Must die for her whom Nature gave him, | |
| Because her darling would not save him. | |
| But Time, which Nature doth despise, | |
| And rudely gives her love the lie, | 20 |
| Makes Hope a fool, and Sorrow wise, | |
| His hands do[th] neither wash nor dry; | |
| But being made of steel and rust, | |
| Turns snow and silk and milk to dust. | |
| The light, the belly, lips, and breath, | 25 |
| He dims, discolours, and destroys; | |
| With those he feeds, but fills not, Death, | |
| Which sometimes were the food of joys: | |
| Yea Time doth dull each lively wit, | |
| And dries all wantonness with it. | 30 |
| Oh, cruel Time, which takes in trust, | |
| Our youth, our joys, and all we have, | |
| And pays us but with age and dust; | |
| Who in the dark and silent grave, | |
| When we have wander’d all our ways, | 35 |
| Shuts up the story of our days. | |