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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  The Second Rapture

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

The Second Rapture

By Thomas Carew (1595?–1639?)
 
(From The Poems and Masque of Thomas Carew. London. 1640. Edited by Joseph Woodfall Ebsworth. London. 1893)

NO, worldling, no; ’tis not thy gold,
Which thou dost use but to behold,
Nor fortune, honour, nor long life,
Children, or friends, or a good wife,
That makes thee happy: these things be        5
But shadows of felicity.
Give me a wench above thirteen,
Already voted to the Queen
Of Love, and lovers; whose soft hair,
Fann’d with the breath of gentle air,        10
O’er-spreads her shoulders like a tent,
And is her veil and ornament;
Whose tender touch will make the blood
Wild in the aged and the good;
Whose kisses, fast’ned to the mouth        15
Of three-score years and longer slouth, 1
Renew the age; and whose bright eye
Obscures those ‘lesser lights of sky;
Whose snowy breasts (if we may call
That snow, that never melts at all,)        20
Makes Jove invent a new disguise,
In spite of Juno’s jealousies;
Whose every part doth re-invite
The old decayed appetite:
And in whose sweet embraces I        25
May melt myself to love, and die.
    This is true bliss, and I confess
    There is no other happiness.
 
Note 1. Sloth. [back]