Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910.

Love’s New Philosophy

Philip Ayres (1638–1712)

WHOE’ER a lover is of art,

May come and learn of me

A new philosophy,

Such as no schools could e’er impart.

Love all my other notions does control,

And reads these stranger lectures to my soul.

This god who takes delight to lie,

Does sacred truths defame,

And Aristotle blame,

Concluding all by subtilty:

His syllogisms with such art are made,

Not Solomon himself could them evade.

So wondrous is his art and skill,

His reasons pierce, like darts,

Men’s intellects and hearts;

Old maxims he destroys at will,

And blinded Plato so, he made him think,

’Twas water, when he gave him fire to drink.

That water can extinguish fire,

All ages did allow;

But Love denies it now,

And says it makes his flame rage higher;

Which truth myself have prov’d for many years,

Wherein I’ve wept whole deluges of tears.

At the sun’s rays, you, Cynthia, know,

The ice no more can melt,

Nor can the fire be felt,

Or have it wonted influence on snow:

By your relentless heart is this exprest,

Your eyes are suns, the fire is in my breast:

When soul and body separate,

That then the life must die:

This too I must deny,

My soul’s with her, who rules my fate.

Yet still my organs move a proof to give,

That soul and body can divided live.

Remove the cause, the effects will cease.

This is an error too,

And found by me untrue;

My fair when near disturbs my peace,

But when she’s furthest off, no tongue can tell

The raging pangs of Love my heart does feel.

All creatures love not their own kind.

I this new axiom try:

And that all fear to die

By nature—a mistake I find:

For I, a man, do a fierce creature love,

And such, I know, that will my murd’ress prove.

Here two extremes are eas’ly join’d,

Joy and grief in my breast,

Which give my soul no rest;

Both to torment me are combin’d:

For when I view the source of all my wrong,

I sigh my music, mix with tears my song.

That all things like effects produce:

I readily can prove

A paradox in Love,

And my conclusion hence deduce;

Cold Cynthia to my zeal yields no return,

Though ice her heart she makes my heart to burn.

Whilst in this torment I remain,

It is no mystery

To be, and not to be;

I die to joy, and live to pain.

So that, my fair, I may be justly said,

To be, and not to be, alive and dead.

Now, go, my song, yet shun the eyes

Of those ne’er felt Love’s flame,

And if my Cynthia blame

Thy arguments as sopphistries,

Tell her, this is Love’s New Philosophy,

Which none can understand, but such as try.