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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Richard Lovelace (1618–1658)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

To Lucasta, Going beyond the Seas

Richard Lovelace (1618–1658)

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 earthly bodies left behind.