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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Love-poems (from The Mistress of Philarete)

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

George Wither (1588–1667)

Love-poems (from The Mistress of Philarete)

1.
AND her lips (that shew no dulness)

Full are, in the meanest fulness:

Those, the leaves be, whose unfolding

Brings sweet pleasures to beholding:

For, such pearls they do disclose,

Both the Indies match not those:

Yet are so in order placed,

As their whiteness is more graced.

Each part is so well disposed,

And her dainty mouth composed,

So, as there is no distortion

Misbeseems that sweet proportion.

When her ivory teeth she buries,

Twixt her two enticing cherries,

There appear such pleasures hidden,

As might tempt what were forbidden.

If you look again the whiles

She doth part those lips in smiles,

’Tis as when a flash of light

Breaks from heaven to glad the night.

2.
Oft have the Nymphs of greatest worth,

Made suit my songs to hear;

As oft (when I have sighed forth

Such notes as saddest were)

‘Alas!’ said they, ‘poor gentle heart,

Whoe’er that shepherd be:’

But, none of them suspects my smart,

Nor thinks, it meaneth me.

When I have reached so high a strain

Of passion in my song,

That they have seen the tears to rain

And trill my cheek along:

Instead of sigh, or weeping eye,

To sympathise with me;

‘Oh, were he once in love,’ they cry,

‘How moving would he be!’

Oh pity me, you powers above,

And take my skill away;

Or let my hearers think I love,

And fain not what I say.

For, if I could disclose the smart,

Which I unknown do bear;

Each line would make them sighs impart,

And every word, a tear.

3.
Her true beauty leaves behind,

Apprehensions in my mind,

Of more sweetness than all art

Or inventions can impart;

Thoughts too deep to be exprest,

And too strong to be supprest;

Which oft raiseth my conceits,

To so unbelieved heights,

That (I fear) some shallow brain

Thinks my muses do but feign.

Sure, he wrongs them if he do:

For, could I have reached to

So like strains as these you see,

Had there been no such as she?

Is it possible that I,

Who scarce heard of Poesy,

Should a mere Idea raise

To as true a pitch of praise

As the learned poets could,

Now, or in the times of old,

All those real beauties bring,

Honoured by their sonneting?

(Having arts and favours too

More t’encourage what they do)—

No; if I had never seen

Such a beauty; I had been

Piping in the country shades,

To the homely dairy maids,

For a country fiddler’s fees;

Clouted cream, and bread and cheese.

I no skill in numbers had,

More than every shepherd’s lad,

Till she taught me strains that were

Pleasing to her gentle ear.

Her fair splendour and her worth

From obscureness drew me forth.

And, because I had no Muse,

She herself deigned to infuse

All the skill by which I climb

To these praises in my rhyme.

Which, if she had pleased to add,

To that art sweet Drayton had,

Or that happy swain that shall

Sing Britannia’s Pastoral;

Or to theirs, whose verse set forth

Rosalind, and Stella’s worth;

They had doubled all their skill,

Gained on Apollo’s Hill:

And as much more set her forth

As I ’m short of them in worth.

They had unto heights aspired,

Might have justly been admired;

And, in such brave strains had moved

As of all had been approved.