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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

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

To Music, to Becalm His Fever

Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

CHARM me asleep, and melt me so

With thy delicious numbers,

That, being ravisht, hence I go

Away in easy slumbers.

Ease my sick head,

And make my bed,

Thou power that canst sever

From me this ill,

And quickly still,

Though thou not kill,

My fever.

Thou sweetly canst convert the same

From a consuming fire

Into a gently licking flame,

And make it thus expire.

Then make me weep

My pains asleep;

And give me such reposes

That I,—poor I,

May think thereby

I live and die

’Mongst roses.

Fall on me like the silent dew,

Or like those maiden showers

Which, by the peep of day, do strew

A baptism o’er the flowers.

Melt, melt my pains

With thy soft strains;

That, having ease me given,

With full delight

I leave this light,

And take my flight

For Heaven.