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Home  »  English Poetry I  »  231. Ask Me No More

English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

Thomas Carew

231. Ask Me No More

ASK me no more where Jove bestows,

When June is past, the fading rose;

For in your beauty’s orient deep

These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray

The golden atoms of the day;

For in pure love did heaven prepare

Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste

The nightingale when May is past;

For in your sweet dividing throat

She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars ’light

That downwards fall in dead of night;

For in your eyes they sit, and there

Fixèd become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west

The Phœnix builds her spicy nest;

For unto you at last she flies,

And in your fragrant bosom dies.