Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden
Lord Herbert of Cherbury (15831648)An Ode upon a Question Moved Whether Love Should Continue for Ever
H
The watery ground that late did mourn
Was strew’d with flowers for the return
Of the wish’d bridegroom of the earth.
Their hymns unto the pleasant time,
And in a sweet consorted chime
Did welcome in the cheerful spring.
And warbling murmurs of a brook,
And varied notes of leaves that shook,
An harmony of parts did bind.
That mutually happy pair,
Melander and Celinda fair,
The season with their loves did bless.
Unchangèd, they did never move;
As if so great and pure a love
No glass but it could represent.
She first brake silence, saying, ‘Dear friend,
O that our love might take no end,
Or never had beginning took.’
Then with a look, it seem’d, denied
All earthly power but hers, yet so
As if to her breath he did owe
This borrow’d life, he thus replied:
These vertuous habits we acquire
As being with the soul entire
Must with it evermore endure.
And vainer yet were Heaven’s laws,
When to an everlasting cause
They give a perishing effect.
One good affection can impair;
For where God doth admit the fair,
Think you that He excludeth Love?
These hands again thine hand enfold,
And all chaste blessings can be told
Shall with us everlasting be.
When bodies once this life forsake,
Or they could no delight partake,
Why should they ever rise again?
Make love the end of knowledge here,
How perfect will our love be where
All imperfection is refin’d.
Much less your fairest mind invade;
Were not our souls immortal made,
Our equal loves can make them such.
And be no more, nor you, nor I;
As one another’s mystery
Each shall be both, yet both but one.