For while she did this lower world adorn, Her body seem'd rather assumed than born: So rarefied, advanced, so pure and whole, That body might have been another's soul; And equally a miracle it were,
That she could die, or that she could live here.
RICHARD CRASHAW [1613?-1649]
UPON THE BOOK AND PICTURE OF THE
LIVE in these conquering leaves: live all the same; And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame; Live here, great Heart; and love, and die, and kill: And bleed, and wound, and yield, and conquer still. Let this immortal life where'er it comes
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms. Let mystic deaths wait on't; and wise souls be The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee. O sweet Incendiary! show here thy art Upon this carcase of a hard cold heart; Let all thy scatter'd shafts of light, that play Among the leaves of thy large books of day, Combined against this breast at once break in, And take away from me myself and sin; This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me. O thou undaunted Daughter of Desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires; By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day, And by thy thirsts of love more large than they; By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire, By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His; By all the Heav'n thou hast in Him (Fair sister of the Seraphim!);
By all of Him we have in thee; Leave nothing of myself in me. Let me so read thy life, that I Unto all life of mine may die!
[From THE FLAMING HEART, etc.]
RICHARD LOVELACE [1618-1658]
TO LUCASTA ON GOING TO THE WARS
TELL me not, Sweet, I am unkind, That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly.
True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield.
Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore
I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.
TO LUCASTA ON GOING BEYOND SEAS
IF to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that when I am gone
You or I were alone;
Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blustering wind, or swallowing wave.
But I'll not sigh one blast or gale To swell my sail,
Or pay a tear to 'suage
The foaming blue-god's rage;
For whether he will let me pass
Or no, I'm still as happy as I was.
Though seas and land betwixt us both,
Our faith and troth,
Like separated souls,
All time and space controls: Above the highest sphere we meet Unseen, unknown, and greet as Angels greet.
So then we do anticipate Our after-fate,
And are alive i' the skies,
If thus our lips and eyes
Can speak like spirits unconfined
In Heaven, their earthy bodies left behind.
WHEN love with unconfinèd wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates; When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fetter'd to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups run swiftly round With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses crown'd, Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths and draughts go free
Fishes that tipple in the deep Know no such liberty.
When, like committed linnets, I With shriller throat shall sing The sweetness, mercy, majesty, And glories of my King;
When I shall voice aloud, how good He is, how great should be, Enlarged winds that curl the flood Know no such liberty.
Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love- And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.
HENRY VAUGHAN [1622–1695]
HAPPY those early days, when I Shined in my Angel-infancy! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walk'd above A mile or two, from my first love, And looking back-at that short space- Could see a glimpse of His bright face: When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense, A sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness.
O how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain, Where first I left my glorious train; From whence th' enlightened spirit sees That shady City of Palm Trees. But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way! Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps will move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.
THEY are all gone into the world of Light, And I alone sit ling'ring here; Their very memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts doth clear.
It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest, After the sun's remove.
I see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days:
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary, Mere glimmerings and decays.
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