For while she did this lower world adorn, That she could die, or that she could live here. 144 RICHARD CRASHAW [1613?-1649] THE FLAMING HEART UPON THE BOOK AND PICTURE OF THE SERAPHICAL SAINT TERESA LIVE in these conquering leaves: live all the same; Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms. By all thy dower of lights and fires; By all thy lives and deaths of love; By thy large draughts of intellectual day, 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 of Him we have in thee; [From THE FLAMING HEART, etc.] RICHARD LOVELACE [1618-1658] 145 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 True, a new mistress now I chase, Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore I could not love thee, Dear, so much, 146 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. ། 147 But I'll not sigh one blast or gale Or pay a tear to 'suage The foaming blue-god's rage; Though seas and land betwixt us both, Our faith and troth, Like separated souls, All time and space controls: So then we do anticipate And are alive i' the skies, If thus our lips and eyes Can speak like spirits unconfined In Heaven, their earthy bodies left behind. TO ALTHEA FROM PRISON WHEN love with unconfinèd wings Hovers within my gates, To whisper at the grates; And fetter'd to her eye, The birds that wanton in the air Know no such liberty. When flowing cups run swiftly round Our careless heads with roses crown'd, When thirsty grief in wine we steep, When healths and draughts go free HAPPY those early days, when I Shined in my Angel-infancy! Before I understood this place And in those weaker glories spy Before I taught my tongue to wound But felt through all this fleshly dress O how I long to travel back, 149 DEPARTED FRIENDS THEY are all gone into the world of Light, Their very memory is fair and bright, And my sad thoughts doth clear. It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest, 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. |