dots-menu
×

Home  »  The Book of Restoration Verse  »  Katherine Philips (‘Orinda’) (1632–1664)

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

To One Persuading a Lady to Marriage

Katherine Philips (‘Orinda’) (1632–1664)

FORBEAR, bold youth; all’s heaven here,

And what you do aver

To others courtship may appear,

’Tis sacrilege to her.

She is a public deity;

And were ’t not very odd

She should dispose herself to be

A petty household god?

First make the sun in private shine

And bid the world adieu,

That so he may his beams confine

In compliment to you:

But if of that you do despair,

Think how you did amiss

To strive to fix her beams which are

More bright and large than his.