C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Inquiry

AMONGST the myrtles as I walked,

Love and my sighs together talked;

Tell me (said I in deep distress)

Where I may find my shepherdess?

Thou fool (said Love), know’st thou not this,—

In everything that’s good she is:

In yonder tulip go and seek;

There thou mayst find her lip, her cheek.

In yonder enameled pansy by,

There thou shalt have her curious eye;

In bloom of peach, in rosy bud,

There wave the streamers of her blood;

In brightest lilies that there stands,

The emblems of her whiter hands;

In yonder rising hill there swells

Such sweets as in her bosom dwells.

’Tis true (said I), and thereupon

I went to pluck them one by one,

To make of parts a union;

But on a sudden all was gone.

With that I stopped. Said Love, These be

(Fond man) resemblances of thee;

And in these flowers thy joys shall die,

Even in the twinkling of an eye,

And all thy hopes of her shall wither,

Like these short sweets thus knit together.