No More Learning

And between each rising breast,
Lies the valley call'd my nest,
Where I sit and proyne my wings 35
After flight; and put new stings
To my shafts: her very name
With my mother's is the same.
I confess all, I replied,
And the glass hangs by her side, 40
And the girdle 'bout her waist,
All is Venus, save unchaste.
But alas, thou seest the least
Of her good, who is the best
Of her sex: but couldst thou, Love, 45
Call to mind the forms that strove
For the apple, and those three
Make in one, the same were she.
For this beauty yet doth hide
Something more than thou hast spied. 50
Outward grace weak love beguiles:
She is Venus when she smiles:
But she's Juno when she walks,
And Minerva when she talks.


UNDERWOODS XXXVI.

_AN ELEGY_.

By those bright eyes, at whose immortal fires
Love lights his torches to inflame desires;
By that fair stand, your forehead, whence he bends
His double bow, and round his arrows sends;
By that tan grove, your hair, whose globy rings 5
He flying curls, and crispeth with his wings;
By those pure baths your either cheek discloses,
Where he doth steep himself in milk and roses;
And lastly, by your lips, the bank of kisses,
Where men at once may plant and gather blisses: 10
Ten me, my lov'd friend, do you love or no?
So well as I may tell in verse, 'tis so?
You blush, but do not:--friends are either none,
Though they may number bodies, or but one.
I'll therefore ask no more, but bid you love, 15
And so that either may example prove
Unto the other; and live patterns, how
Others, in time, may love as we do now.
Slip no occasion; as time stands not still,
I know no beauty, nor no youth that will. 20
To use the present, then, is not abuse,
You have a husband is the just excuse
Of all that can be done him; such a one
As would make shift to make himself alone
That which we can; who both in you, his wife, 25
His issue, and all circumstance of life,
As in his place, because he would not vary,
Is constant to be extraordinary.


THE GIPSIES METAMORPHOSED

_The Lady Purbeck's Fortune, by the_

_Gip. _ Help me, wonder, here's a book, 2
Where I would for ever look:
Never yet did gipsy trace
Smoother lines in hands or face:
Venus here doth Saturn move 5
That you should be Queen of Love;
And the other stars consent;
Only Cupid's not content;
For though you the theft disguise,
You have robb'd him of his eyes.
10
And to shew his envy further:
Here he chargeth you with murther:
Says, although that at your sight,
He must all his torches light;
Though your either cheek discloses 15
Mingled baths of milk and roses;
Though your lips be banks of blisses,
Where he plants, and gathers kisses;
And yourself the reason why,
Wisest men for love may die; 20
You will turn all hearts to tinder,
And shall make the world one cinder.


_From_

A CHALLENGE AT TILT,

AT A MARRIAGE.

_2 Cup. _ What can I turn other than a Fury itself to see thy
impudence? If I be a shadow, what is substance? was it not I that
yesternight waited on the bride into the nuptial chamber, and,
against the bridegroom came, made her the throne of love? had I
not lighted my torches in her eyes, planted my mother's roses in 5
her cheeks; were not her eye-brows bent to the fashion of my bow,
and her looks ready to be loosed thence, like my shafts? had I not
ripened kisses on her lips, fit for a Mercury to gather, and made
her language sweeter than his upon her tongue? was not the girdle
about her, he was to untie, my mother's, wherein all the joys and 10
delights of love were woven?

_1 Cup. _ And did not I bring on the blushing bridegroom to taste
those joys? and made him think all stay a torment? did I not
shoot myself into him like a flame, and made his desires and his
graces equal? were not his looks of power to have kept the night 15
alive in contention with day, and made the morning never wished
for? Was there a curl in his hair, that I did not sport in, or a
ring of it crisped, that might not have become Juno's fingers? his
very undressing, was it not Love's arming?