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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Like to the Wealthy Island Thou Shalt Lie

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

Like to the Wealthy Island Thou Shalt Lie

Anonymous
 
(From The New Academy of Compliments, 1671)

LIKE to the wealthy island thou shalt lie,
    And like the sea about it, I;
Thou like fair Albion to the sailors’ sight,
Spreading her beauteous bosom all in white;
    Like the kind Ocean I will be,        5
With loving arms for ever clasping thee.
 
But I’ll embrace thee gentlier far than so,
    As their fresh banks soft rivers do;
Nor shall the proudest planet boast a power
Of making my full love to ebb an hour:        10
    It never dry or low can prove,
Whilst my unwasted fountain feeds my love.
 
Such heat and vigour shall our kisses bear,
    As if like doves we engender’d there:
No bound nor rule my pleasures shall endure,        15
In love there’s none too much an epicure.
    Nought shall my hands or lips control;
I’ll kiss thee through, I’ll kiss thy very soul.
 
Yet nothing but the night our sport shall know,
    Night that’s both blind and silent too.        20
Alpheus found not a more secret trace,
His loved Sicanian fountain to embrace,
    Creeping so far beneath the sea,
Than I will do t’enjoy and feast on thee.
 
Men out of wisdom, women out of pride,        25
    The pleasant thefts of love do hide:
That may secure thee, but thou hast yet from me
A more infallible security;
    For there’s no danger I should tell
The joys which are to me unspeakable.        30