Love is not love but giveu free;

And so is mine, so should your's be.

Her heart, that melts to hear of others' moan,

To mine is stone:

Her eyes, that weep a stranger's eyes to see,

Joy to wound me:

Yet I so well affect each part,

As (caus'd by them) I love my smart.

Say her disdainings justly must be grac'd
With name of chaste;

And that she frowns, lest longing should exceed,
And raging breed;

So her disdains can ne'er offend,

Unless self-love take private end.

'Tis love breeds love in me, and cold disdain

Kills that again;

A's water causeth fire to fret and fume

'Till all consume.

Who can of love more rich gift make,

Than to Love's self for Love's own sake?

I'll never dig in quarry of an heart

To have no part;

Nor roast in fiery eyes, which always are
Canicular.

Who this way would a lover prove,

May shew his patience, not his love.

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A frown may be sometimes for physic good,
But not for food;

And for that raging humour there is sure

A gentler cure.

A LETTER TO THE LADY CAREY

AND MRS. ESSEX RICHE,

FROM AMIENS.

MADAM,

HERE, where by all all saints invoked are,
It were too much schism to be singular,
And 'gainst a practice general to war.

Yet turning to saints, should my humility
To other saint than you directed be,
That were to make my schism heresy.

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Nor would I be a convertite so cold
As not to tell it: if this be too bold,
Pardons are in this market cheaply sold.

Where, because faith is in too low degree,
I thought it some apostleship in me...
To speak things which by faith alone I see;
Donne.]

Pij

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That is, of you, who are a firmament
Of virtues, where no one is grown or spent ;
They're your materials, not your ornament.

Others, whom we call virtuous, are not so
In their whole substance; but their virtues grow
But in their humours, and at seasons show,

For when, thro' tasteless flat humility,

In dough-bak'd men some harmlessness we see, 'Tis but his flegm that 's virtuous, and not he:

So is the blood sometimes. Who ever ran
To danger unimpórtun'd, he was then
No better than a sanguine-virtuous man.

So cloister'd men, who, in pretence of fear,
All contributions to this life forbear,
Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.

Spiritual choleric critics, which in all

Religions find faults, and forgive no fall,

Have, thro' this zeal, virtue but in their gall.

We're thus but parcel guilt; to gold we 're grown, When virtue is our soul's complexion;

Who knows his virtue's name or place hath none.

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Virtue's but aguish, when 't is several,
By occasion wak'd and circumstantial;
True virtue's soul always in all deeds all.

This virtue thinking to give dignity
To your soul, found there no infirmity;
For your soul was as good virtue as she.

She therefore wrought upon that part of you
Which is scarce less than soul, as she could do,
And so hath made your beauty virtue too.

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Hence comes it that your beauty wounds not hearts,
As others, with prophane and sensual darts,
But, as an influence, virtuous thoughts imparts.

But if such friends by th' honour of your sight
Grow capable of this so great a light,
As to partake your virtues and their might,

What must I think that iufluence must do
Where it finds sympathy and matter too,
Virtue and beauty, of the same stuff as you?

Which is your noble worthy sister; she
Of whom, if what in this my ecstasy
And revelation of you both I see,

I should write here as in short galleries,
The master at the end large glasses ties,
So to present the room twice to our eyes;

So I should give this letter length, and say
That which I said of you: there is no way
From either, but to th' other not to stray.

May therefore this be' enough to testify
My true devotion, free from flattery.
He that believes himself doth never lie.

ΤΟ

THE COUNTESS OF SALISBURY... AUGUST, 1614.

FAIR, great, and good! since seeing you we see
What Heav'n can do, what any earth can be;
Since now your beauty shines, now when the sun,
Grown stale, is to so low a value run,
That his dishevell'd beams and scatter'd fires
Serve but for ladies' periwigs and tires

In lovers' sonnets; you come to repair

God's book of creatures, teaching what is fair.
Since now, when all is wither'd, shrunk, and dry'd,
All virtues ebb'd out to a dead low tide,
All the world's frame being crumbled into sand,
Where ev'ry man thinks by himself to stand,

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