SIR W. RALEIGH.

* * * * *

  If Love be life, I long to die,
    Live they that list for me: 
  And he that gains the most thereby,
    A fool at least shall be. 
  But he that feels the sorest fits
  ’Scapes with no less than loss of wits. 
    Unhappy life they gain,
    Which love do entertain.

SIR W. RALEIGH.

* * * * *

  If all the world and Love were young,
  And truth in every shepherd’s tongue,
  These pleasures might my passion move,
  To live with thee, and be my love. 
  But fading flowers in every field,
  To winter floods their treasures yield;
  A honey’d tongue, a heart of gall,
  Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.

SIR W. RALEIGH.—­Answer to Marlowe’s “Come Live,” &c.

* * * * *

  Passions are likened best to floods and streams;
    The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb,
  So, when affections yield discourse, it seems
    The bottom is but shallow whence they come: 
  They that are rich in words must needs discover
  They are but poor in that which makes a lover.

SIR W. RALEIGH.

* * * * *

——­ Love is nature’s second sun Causing a spring of virtues where he shines.  And, as without the sun, the world’s great eye, All colours, beauties, both of art and nature, Are giv’n in vain to men; so, without love All beauties bred in woman are in vain, All virtues born in men lie buried; For love informs them as the sun doth colours.  And as the sun reflecting his warm beams Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers, So love, fair shining in the inward man, Brings forth in him the honourable fruits Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts, Brave resolution, and divine discourse.  O! ’tis the paradise! the heaven of earth!

CHAPMAN.

* * * * *

  Ladies, though to your conquering eyes
  Love owes its chiefest victories,
  And borrows those bright arms from you
  With which he does the world subdue;
  Yet you yourselves are not above
  The empire nor the griefs of love. 
  Then wrack not lovers with disdain,
  Lest love on you revenge their pain;
  You are not free, because you’re fair,
  The boy did not his mother spare: 
  Though beauty be a killing dart,
  It is no armour for the heart.

ETHERIDGE.

* * * * *

  Come, little infant, love me now. 
    While thine unsuspected years
  Clear thine aged father’s brow
    From cold jealousy and fears. 
  Pretty, surely, ’twere to see
    By young Love old Time beguil’d;
  While our sportings are as free
    As the muse’s with the child.

* * * * *