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As thy malice could desire ;
Yet bring with me all the fire,
That love in his torches had. "



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70 THE POEMS



XXV.

At these words away he broke,
As who long has praying lien,
To his head's-man makes the sign
And receives the parting stroke.

XXVI.

But hence virgins all beware ;
Last night he with Phlogis slept,
This night for Dorinda kept,
And but rid to take the air.

xxvn.
Yet he does himself excuse;
Nor indeed without a cause :
For, according to the laws,
Why did Chloe once refuse ?



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OF MARVELL. 71



THE DEFINITION OF LOVE.

I.
My Love is of a birth as rare
As *iisy for object, strange and high ;
It was begotten by despair,
Upon impossibility.

n.
Magnanimous despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing.
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

III.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed ;
But fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt

IV.

For fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close ;
Their union would her ruin be.
And her tyrannic jwwer depose.



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72 THE POEMS



V.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced,

VI.

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

VII.

As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

vin.
Tlierefore the love which us doth bind.
But fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.



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OF MABYELL. 73



THE PICTURE OF T. C. IN A PROSPECT
OP FLOWERS.