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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  To Mrs. Eliz. Wheeler

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

To Mrs. Eliz. Wheeler

By Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

Under the Name of The Lost Shepherdess

AMONG the myrtles as I walkt,

Love and my sighs thus intertalkt:

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 sweet, she is.

In yond’ carnation go and seek

Where thou shalt find her lip and cheek;

In that enameled pansy by,

There thou shalt have her curious eye;

In bloom of peach and rose’s bud,

There waves the streamer of her blood.

’Tis true, said I; and thereupon

I went to pluck them one by one,

To make of parts an union;

But on a sudden all were gone.

At which I stopt: said Love, these be

The true resemblances of thee;

For as these flowers, thy joys must die,

And in the turning of an eye;

And all thy hopes of her must wither,

Like those short sweets ere knit together.