No More Learning

151. UPON A YOUNG MOTHER OF MANY CHILDREN.

Let all chaste matrons, when they chance to see
My num'rous issue, praise and pity me:
Praise me for having such a fruitful womb,
Pity me, too, who found so soon a tomb.


152. TO ELECTRA.

I'll come to thee in all those shapes
As Jove did when he made his rapes,
Only I'll not appear to thee
As he did once to Semele.
Thunder and lightning I'll lay by,
To talk with thee familiarly.
Which done, then quickly we'll undress
To one and th' other's nakedness,
And, ravish'd, plunge into the bed,
Bodies and souls commingled,
And kissing, so as none may hear,
We'll weary all the fables there.

_Fables_, _i. e. _, of Jove's amours.


153. HIS WISH.

It is sufficient if we pray
To Jove, who gives and takes away:
Let him the land and living find;
Let me alone to fit the mind.


154.
HIS PROTESTATION TO PERILLA.

Noonday and midnight shall at once be seen:
Trees, at one time, shall be both sere and green:
Fire and water shall together lie
In one self-sweet-conspiring sympathy:
Summer and winter shall at one time show
Ripe ears of corn, and up to th' ears in snow:
Seas shall be sandless; fields devoid of grass;
Shapeless the world, as when all chaos was,
Before, my dear Perilla, I will be
False to my vow, or fall away from thee.


155. LOVE PERFUMES ALL PARTS.

If I kiss Anthea's breast,
There I smell the phoenix nest:
If her lip, the most sincere
Altar of incense I smell there--
Hands, and thighs, and legs are all
Richly aromatical.
Goddess Isis can't transfer
Musks and ambers more from her:
Nor can Juno sweeter be,
When she lies with Jove, than she.


156. TO JULIA.

Permit me, Julia, now to go away;
Or by thy love decree me here to stay.
If thou wilt say that I shall live with thee,
Here shall my endless tabernacle be:
If not, as banish'd, I will live alone
There where no language ever yet was known.


157. ON HIMSELF.

Love-sick I am, and must endure
A desperate grief, that finds no cure.
Ah me! I try; and trying, prove
_No herbs have power to cure love. _
Only one sovereign salve I know,
And that is death, the end of woe.