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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  Thomas Lodge (1558–1625)

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

Love Guards the Roses of Thy Lips

Thomas Lodge (1558–1625)

LOVE guards the roses of thy lips

And flies about them like a bee;

If I approach he forward skips,

And if I kiss he stingeth me.

Love in thine eyes doth build his tower,

And sleeps within his pretty shrine;

And if I look the boy will lower,

And from their orbs shoot shafts divine.

Love works thy heart within his fire,

And in my tears doth firm the same;

And if I tempt it will retire,

And of my plaints doth make a game.

Love, let me cull her choicest flowers;

And pity me, and calm her eye;

Make soft her heart, dissolve her lowers;

Then will I praise thy deity.

But if thou do not, Love, I’ll truly serve her

In spite of thee, and by firm faith deserve her.