The little Love-god lying once asleepLaid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keepCame tripping by; but in her maiden handThe fairest votary took up that fireWhich many legions of true hearts had warm’d;And so the general of hot desireWas sleeping by a virgin hand disarm’d.This brand she quenched […]

Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep:A maid of Dian’s this advantage found,And his love-kindling fire did quickly steepIn a cold valley-fountain of that ground;Which borrow’d from this holy fire of LoveA dateless lively heat, still to endure,And grew a seething bath, which yet men proveAgainst strange maladies a sovereign cure.But at my mistress’ […]

In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing,In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn,In vowing new hate after new love bearing.But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,When I break twenty? I am perjured most;For all my vows are oaths but to misuse […]

Love is too young to know what conscience is;Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:For, thou betraying me, I do betrayMy nobler part to my gross body’s treason;My soul doth tell my body that he mayTriumph in love; flesh […]

O, from what power hast thou this powerful mightWith insufficiency my heart to sway?To make me give the lie to my true sight,And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,That in the very refuse of thy deedsThere is such strength and warrantize of skillThat, in my mind, […]

Canst thou, O cruel! say I love thee not,When I against myself with thee partake?Do I not think on thee, when I forgotAm of myself, all tyrant, for thy sake?Who hateth thee that I do call my friend?On whom frown’st thou that I do fawn upon?Nay, if thou lour’st on me, do I not spendRevenge […]

O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,Which have no correspondence with true sight!Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,That censures falsely what they see aright?If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,What means the world to say it is not so?If it be not, then love doth well denoteLove’s […]

My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease,Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,The uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,Hath left me, and I desperate now approveDesire is death, which physic did except.Past cure I am, now […]

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,[ ] these rebel powers that thee array;Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?Why so large cost, having so short a lease,Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?Then […]

Those lips that Love’s own hand did makeBreathed forth the sound that said ‘I hate’To me that languish’d for her sake;But when she saw my woeful state,Straight in her heart did mercy come,Chiding that tongue that ever sweetWas used in giving gentle doom,And taught it thus anew to greet:‘I hate’ she alter’d with an end,That […]