Abraham Cowley: Verses about Love

I wonder what those lovers mean, who say
They have giv'n their hearts away.
Some good kind lover tell me how;
For mine is but a torment to me now.

If so it be one place both hearts contain,
For what do they complain?
What courtesy can Love do more,
Than to join hearts that parted were before?

Woe to her stubborn heart, if once mine come
Into the self-same room;
'Twill tear and blow up all within,
Like a granado shot into a magazine.

Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts,
Of both our broken hearts:
Shall out of both one new one make,
From hers, th' allay; from mine, the metal take.

For of her heart he from the flames will find
But little left behind:
Mine only will remain entire;
No dross was there, to perish in the fire.

'Tis true, I'have lov'd already three or four,
And shall three or four hundred more;
I'll love each fair one that I see,
Till I find one at last that shall love me.

That shall my Canaan be, the fatal soil,
That ends my wandrings, and my toil.
I'll settle there and happy grow;
The Country does with Milk and Honey flow.

The Needle trembles so, and turns about,
Till it the Northern Point find out:
But constant then and fixt does prove,
Fixt, that his dearest Pole as soon may move.

Then may my Vessel torn and shipwrackt be,
If it put forth again to Sea:
It never more abroad shall rome,
Though't could next voyage bring the Indies home.

But I must sweat in Love, and labour yet,
Till I a Competency get.
They're slothful fools who leave a Trade,
Till they a moderate fortune by't have made.

Variety I ask not; give me One
To live perpetually upon.
The person Love does to us fit,
Like Manna, has the Tast of all in it.

INDEED I must confess,
When souls mix 't is an happiness;
But not complete till bodies too do combine,
And closely as our minds together join:
But half of heaven the souls in glory taste,
Till by love in heaven, at last,
Their bodies too are plac'd.

In thy immortal part
Man, as well as I, thou art;
But something't is that differs thee and me;
And we must one even in that difference be.
I thee, both as a man and woman, prize;
For a perfect love implies
Love in all capacities.

Can that for true love pass,
When a fair woman courts her glass?
Something unlike must in love's likeness be;
His wonder is, one, and variety:
For he, whose soul nought but a soul can move,
Does a new Narcissus prove,
And his own image love.

That souls do beauty know,
'T is to the bodies' help they owe;
If, when they know 't, they straight abuse that trust,
And shut the body from't, 't is as unjust
As if I brought my dearest friend to see
My mistress, and at th' instant he
Should steal her quite from me.

Beneath this gloomy shade,
By Nature only for my sorrows made,
I'll spend this voyce in crys,
In tears I'll waste these eyes

By Love so vainly fed;
So Lust of old the Deluge punished.
Ah wretched youth! said I,
'Ah, wretched youth!' twice did I sadly cry:
'Ah, wretched youth!' the fields and floods reply.

When thoughts of Love I entertain,
I meet no words but 'Never,' and 'In vain.'
'Never' alas that dreadful name
Which fuels the infernal flame:

'Never,' My time to come must waste;
'In vain,' torments the present and the past.
'In vain, in vain!' said I;
'In vain, in vain!' twice did I sadly cry;
'In vain, in vain!' the fields and floods reply.

No more shall fields or floods do so;
For I to shades more dark and silent go:
All this world's noise appears to me
A dull ill-acted comedy:

No comfort to my wounded sight,
In the suns busy and imperti'nent Light.
Then down I laid my head;
Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled.

'Ah, sottish Soul' said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly;
'Fool to resume her broken chain!
And row her galley here again!'

'Fool, to that body to return
Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!
Once dead, how can it be,
Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
That thou should'st come to live it o're again in me?'

Go, let the fatted calf be kill'd;
My prodigal's come home at last,
With noble resolutions fill'd,
And fill'd with sorrow for the past:
No more will burn with love or wine;
But quite has left his women and his swine.

Welcome, ah! welcome, my poor heart!
Welcome! I little thought, I'll swear
('T is now so long since we did part),
Ever again to see thee here:
Dear wanderer! Since from me you fled,
How often have I heard that thou wert dead!

Hast thou not found each woman's breast
(The lands where thou hast travelled)
Either by savages possest,
Or wild and uninhabited?
What joy couldst take, or what repose,
In countries so unciviliz'd as those?

Lust, the scorching dog-star, here
Rages with immoderate heat;
Whilst pride, the rugged Northern bear,
In others makes the cold too great:
And, where these are temperate known,
The soil's all barren sand or rocky stone.

When once or twice you chanc'd to view
A rich, well-govern'd heart,
Like China, it admitted you
But to the frontier-part.
From Paradise shut for evermore,
What good is 't that an angel kept the door?

Well fare the pride, and the disdain,
And vanities, with beauty join'd;
I ne'er had seen this heart again,
If any fair-one had been kind:
My dove, but once let loose, I doubt
Would ne'er return, had not the flood been out.

THAT THERE IS NO KNOWLEDGE.

Against the Dogmatists.
THE sacred tree 'midst the fair orchard grew;
The Phoenix truth did on it rest,
And built his perfum'd nest;
That right Porphyrian tree which did true Logick shew,
Each leaf did learned notions give,
And th' apples were demonstrative;
So clear their colour and divine,
The very shade they cast did other lights out-shine.

'Taste not,' said God; ' 't is mine and angels' meat;
' A certain death doth sit,
' Like an ill worm, i' th' core of it.
'Ye cannot know and live, nor live or know and eat.'
Thus spoke God, yet man did go
Ignorantly on to know;
Grew so more blind, and she
Who tempted him to this, grew yet more blind than he.

The only science man by this did get,
Was but to know he nothing knew:
He strait his nakedness did view,
His ignorant poor estate, and was asham'd of it.
Yet searches probabilities,
And rhetorick, and fallacies,
And seeks by useless pride,
With slight and withering leaves that nakedness to hide.

'Henceforth,' said God, 'the wretched sons of earth
' Shall sweat for food in vain,
' That will not long sustain;
'And bring with labour forth each fond abortive birth.
' That serpent too, their pride,
' Which aims at things deny'd;
' That learn'd and eloquent lust;
'Instead of mounting high, shall creep upon the dust.'.

WELL then! I now do plainly see
   This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.
The very honey of all earthly joy
Does of all meats the soonest cloy;
   And they, methinks, deserve my pity
Who for it can endure the stings,
The crowd and buzz and murmurings,
   Of this great hive, the city.

Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave
May I a small house and large garden have;
And a few friends, and many books, both true,
Both wise, and both delightful too!
   And since love ne'er will from me flee,
A Mistress moderately fair,
And good as guardian angels are,
   Only beloved and loving me.

O fountains! when in you shall I
Myself eased of unpeaceful thoughts espy?
O fields! O woods! when, when shall I be made
Thy happy tenant of your shade?
   Here 's the spring-head of Pleasure's flood:
Here 's wealthy Nature's treasury,
Where all the riches lie that she
   Has coin'd and stamp'd for good.

Pride and ambition here
Only in far-fetch'd metaphors appear;
Here nought but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter,
And nought but Echo flatter.
   The gods, when they descended, hither
From heaven did always choose their way:
And therefore we may boldly say
   That 'tis the way too thither.

Hoe happy here should I
And one dear She live, and embracing die!
She who is all the world, and can exclude
In deserts solitude.
   I should have then this only fear:
Lest men, when they my pleasures see,
Should hither throng to live like me,
   And so make a city here.

The fish around her crowded, as they do
To the false light that treacherous fisher shew,
And all with as much ease might taken be,
As she at first took me;
For ne'er did light so clear
Among the waves appear,
Though every night the sun himself set there.

Why to mute fish shouldst thou thyself discover
And not to me, thy no less silent lover?
As some from men their buried gold commit
To ghosts, that have no use of it;
Half their rich treasures so
Maids bury; and for aught we know,
(Poor ignorants!) They're mermaids all below.

The amorous waves would fain about her stay,
But still new amorous waves drive them away,
And with swift current to those joys they haste
That do as swiftly waste:
I laugh'd the wanton play to view;
But 't is, alas! at land so too,
And still old lovers yield the place to new.

Kiss her, and as you part, you amorous waves
(My happier rivals, and my fellow-slaves)
Point to your flowery banks, and to her shew
The good your bounties do;
Then tell her what your pride doth cost,
And how your use and beauty's lost,
When rigorous winter binds you up with frost.

Tell her, her beauties and her youth, like thee,
Haste without stop to a devouring sea;
Where they will mix'd and undistinguish'd lie
With all the meanest things that die;
As in the ocean thou
No privilege dost know
Above th' impurest streams that thither flow.

Tell her, kind flood! When this has made her sad,
Tell her there's yet one remedy to be had;
Show her how thou, though long since past, dost find
Thyself yet still behind:
Marriage (say to her) will bring
About the self-same thing.
But she, fond maid, shuts and seals-up the spring.

I'AVE often wish'd to love; what shall I do?
Me still the cruel boy does spare;
And I a double task must bear,
First to woo him, and then a mistress too.
Come at last and strike, for shame,
If thou art any thing besides a name;
I'll think thee else no God to be,
But poets rather Gods, who first created thee.

I ask not one in whom all beauties grow;
Let me but love, whate'er she be,
She cannot seem deform'd to me;
And I would have her seem to others so.
Desire takes wings and straight does fly,
It stays not dully to inquire the Why.
That happy thing, a lover, grown,
I shall not see with others' eyes, scarce with mine own.

If she be coy, and scorn my noble fire;
If her chill heart I cannot move;
Why I'll enjoy the very love,
And make a mistress of my own desire.
Flames their most vigorous heat do hold,
And purest light, if compass'd round with cold:
So, when sharp winter means most harm,
The springing plants are by the snow itself kept warm.

But do not touch my heart, and so be gone;
Strike deep thy burning arrows in!
Lukewarmness I account a sin,
As great in love as in religion.
Come arm'd with flames; for I would prove
All the extremities of mighty Love.
Th' excess of heat is but a fable;
We know the torrid zone is now found habitable.

Among the woods and forests thou art found,
There boars and lions thou dost tame;
Is not my heart a nobler game?
Let Venus, men; and beasts, Diana, wound!
Thou dost the birds thy subjects make;
Thy nimble feathers do their wings o'ertake:
Thou all the spring their songs dost hear;
Make me love too, I'll sing to' thee all the year!

What service can mute fishes do to thee?
Yet against them thy dart prevails,
Piercing the armour of their scales;
And still thy sea-born mother lives i'th' sea.
Dost thou deny only to me
The no-great privilege of captivity?
I beg or challenge here thy bow;
Either thy pity to me, or else thine anger, show.

Come! or I 'll teach the world to scorn that bow:
I'll teach them thousand wholesome arts
Both to resist and cure thy darts,
More than thy skilful Ovid e'er did know.
Musick of sighs thou shalt not hear,
Nor drink one wretched lover's tasteful tear:
Nay, unless soon thou woundest me,
My verses shall not only wound, but murder, thee.

I'LL on; for what should hinder me
From loving and enjoying thee?
Thou canst not those exceptions make,
Which vulgar, sordid mortals take—
That my fate's too mean and low;
'T were pity I should love thee so,
If that dull cause could hinder me
In loving and enjoying thee.

It does not me a whit displease,
That the rich all honours seize;
That you all titles make your own,
Are valiant, learned, wise, alone:
But, if you claim o'er women too
The power which over men ye do;
If you alone must lovers be;
For that, Sirs, you must pardon me.

Rather than lose what does so near
Concern my life and being here,
I'll some such crooked ways invent,
As you, or your forefathers, went:
I'll flatter or oppose the king,
Turn Puritan, or any thing;
I'll force my mind to arts so new:
Grow rich, and love as well as you.

But rather thus let me remain,
As man in paradise did reign;
When perfect love did so agree
With innocence and poverty,
Adam did no jointure give;
Himself was jointure to his Eve:
Untouch'd with avarice yet, or pride,
The rib came freely back t' his side.

A curse upon the man who taught
Women, that love was to be bought!
Rather dote only on your gold,
And that with greedy avarice hold;
For, if woman too submit
To that, and sell herself for it,
Fond lover! you a mistress have
Of her that's but your fellow-slave.

What should those poets mean of old
That made their God to woo in gold?
Of all men, sure, they had no cause
To bind love to such costly laws;
And yet I scarcely blame them now;
For who, alas! would not allow,
That women should such gifts receive,
Could they, as he, be what they give?

If thou, my dear, thyself shouldst prize,
Alas! what value would suffice?
The Spaniard could not do't, though he
Should to both Indies jointure thee.
Thy beauties therefore wrong will take,
If thou shouldst any bargain make;
To give all, will befit thee well;
But not at under-rates to sell.

Bestow thy beauty then on me,
Freely, as nature gave't to thee;
'T is an exploded popish thought
To think that heaven may be bought.
Prayers, hymns, and praises, are the way,
And those my thankful Muse shall pay:
Thy body, in my verse enshrin'd,
Shall grow immortal as thy mind.

I'll fix thy title next in fame
To Sacharissa's well-sung name.
So faithfully will I declare
What all thy wondrous beauties are,
That when, at the last great assize,
All women shall together rise,
Men straight shall cast their eyes on thee
And know at first that thou art she.

IT was a dismal and a fearful night:
Scarce could the Morn drive on th' unwilling Light,
When Sleep, Death's image, left my troubled breast
   By something liker Death possest.
My eyes with tears did uncommanded flow,
   And on my soul hung the dull weight
   Of some intolerable fate.
What bell was that? Ah me! too much I know!

My sweet companion and my gentle peer,
Why hast thou left me thus unkindly here,
Thy end for ever and my life to moan?
   O, thou hast left me all alone!
Thy soul and body, when death's agony
   Besieged around thy noble heart,
   Did not with more reluctance part
Than I, my dearest Friend, do part from thee.

My dearest Friend, would I had died for thee!
Life and this world henceforth will tedious be:
Nor shall I know hereafter what to do
   If once my griefs prove tedious too.
Silent and sad I walk about all day,
   As sullen ghosts stalk speechless by
   Where their hid treasures lie;
Alas! my treasure 's gone; why do I stay?

Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights,
Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love,
   Wonder'd at us from above!
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine;
   But search of deep Philosophy,
   Wit, Eloquence, and Poetry--
Arts which I loved, for they, my Friend, were thine.

Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say
Have ye not seen us walking every day?
Was there a tree about which did not know
   The love betwixt us two?
   Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade;
Or your sad branches thicker join
   And into darksome shades combine,
Dark as the grave wherein my Friend is laid!

Large was his soul: as large a soul as e'er
Submitted to inform a body here;
High as the place 'twas shortly in Heaven to have,
   But low and humble as his grave.
So high that all the virtues there did come,
   As to their chiefest seat
   Conspicuous and great;
So low, that for me too it made a room.

Knowledge he only sought, and so soon caught
As if for him Knowledge had rather sought;
Nor did more learning ever crowded lie
   In such a short mortality.
Whene'er the skilful youth discoursed or writ,
   Still did the notions throng
   About his eloquent tongue;
Nor could his ink flow faster than his wit.

His mirth was the pure spirits of various wit,
Yet never did his God or friends forget;
And when deep talk and wisdom came in view,
   Retired, and gave to them their due.
For the rich help of books he always took,
   Though his own searching mind before
   Was so with notions written o'er,
As if wise Nature had made that her book.

With as much zeal, devotion, piety,
He always lived, as other saints do die.
Still with his soul severe account he kept,
   Weeping all debts out ere he slept.
Then down in peace and innocence he lay,
   Like the Sun's laborious light,
   Which still in water sets at night,
Unsullied with his journey of the day.

But happy Thou, ta'en from this frantic age,
Where ignorance and hypocrisy does rage!
A fitter time for Heaven no soul e'er chose--
   The place now only free from those.
There 'mong the blest thou dost for ever shine;
   And wheresoe'er thou casts thy view
   Upon that white and radiant crew,
See'st not a soul clothed with more light than thine.

First-born of Chaos, who so fair didst come
From the old Negro's darksome womb!
Which, when it saw the lovely child,
The melancholy mass put on kind looks and smiled,

Thou tide of glory which no rest dost know,
But ever ebb and ever flow!
Thou golden shower of a true Jove,
Who does in thee descend, and heaven to earth make love!

Hail, active nature's watchful life and health,
Her joy, her ornament and wealth!
Hail to thy husband Heat, and thee!
Thou the world's beauteous bride, the lusty bridegroom he!

Say, from what golden quivers of the sky
Do all thy winged arrows fly?
Swiftness and power by birth are thine:
From thy great Sire they came, thy Sire the Word divine.

'Tis, I believe, this archery to show,
That so much cost in colors thou,
And skill in painting, dost bestow
Upon thy ancient arms, the gaudy heavenly bow.

Swift as light thoughts their empty career run,
Thy race is finished when begun;
Let a post-angel start with thee,
And thou the goal of earth shalt teach as soon as he.

Thou in the moon's bright chariot, proud and gay,
Dost thy bright wood of stars survey,
And all the year dost with thee bring,
Of thousand flowery lights, thine own nocturnal spring.

Thou Scythian-like dost round thy lands, above
The sun's gilt tent, forever move,
And still, as thou in pomp dost go,
The shining pageants of the world attend thy show.

Nor amidst all these triumphs dost thou scorn
The humble glowworms to adorn,
And with those living spangles gild -
O greatness without pride! - the bushes of the field.

Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
And sleep, the lazy owl of night;
Ashamed and fearful to appear,
They screen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere.

With 'em there hastes, and wildly takes the alarm,
Of painted dreams, a busy swarm;
At the first openings of thine eye,
The various clusters break, the antic atoms fly.

The guilty serpents and obscener beasts
Creep conscious to their secret rests;
Nature to thee does reverence pay;
Ill omens and ill sights removes out of thy way.

At thy appearance, Grief itself is said
To shake his wings and rouse his head.
And cloudy Care has often took
A gentle beamy smile reflected from thy look.

At thy appearance, Fear itself grows bold;
Thy sunshine melts away his cold.
Encouraged at the sight of thee,
To the cheek color comes, and firmness to the knee.

Even Lust, the master of a hardened face,
Blushes if thou beest in the place,
To darkness' curtains he retires;
In sympathizing night he rolls his smoky fires.

When, goddess, thou list'st up thy wakened head
Out of the morning's purple bed,
Thy quire of birds about thee play,
And all the joyful world salutes the rising day.

The ghosts and monster spirits that did presume
A body's privilege to assume
Vanish again invisibly,
And bodies gain again their visibility.

All the world's bravery that delights our eyes
Is but thy several liveries;
Thou the rich dye on them bestow'st;
Thy nimble pencil paints this landscape as thou go'st.

A crimson garment in the rose thou wear'st;
A crown of studded gold thou bear'st;
The virgin blies in their white
Are clad but with the lawn of almost naked light.

The violet, spring's little infant, stands
Girt in thy purple swaddling-bands;
On the fair tulip thou dost dote;
Thou cloth'st it in a gay and parti-colored coat.

With flame condensed thou dost the jewels fix,
And solid colors in it mix;
Flora herself envies to see
Flowers fairer than her own, and durable as she.

Ah, goddess! would thou couldst thy hand withhold
And be less liberal to gold;
Didst thou less value to it give,
Of how much care, alas! mightst thou poor man relieve!

To me the sun is more delightful far,
And all fair days much fairer are,
But few, ah wondrous few, there be
Who do not gold prefer, O goddess, even to thee.

Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea,
Which open all their pores to thee,
Like a clear river thou dost glide,
And with thy living stream through the close channels slide.

But where firm bodies thy free course oppose,
Gently thy source the land o'erflows,
Takes there possession, and does make
Of colors mingled, light, a thick and standing lake.

But the vast ocean of unbounded day
In the empyrean heaven does stay.
Thy rivers, lakes, and springs below
From thence took first their rise, thither at last must flow.