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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Wishes. To His Supposed Mistress

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

Richard Crashaw (c. 1613–1649)

Wishes. To His Supposed Mistress

WHOE’ER she be,

That not impossible she

That shall command my heart and me;

Where’er she lie,

Lock’d up from mortall eye,

In shady leaves of Destiny;

Till that ripe birth

Of studied Fate stand forth,

And teach her fair steps tread our Earth;

Till that divine

Idea, take a shrine

Of crystal flesh, through which to shine;

Meet you her, my wishes,

Bespeak her to my blisses,

And be ye call’d, my absent kisses.

I wish her, beauty

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy tire or glistring shoe tie.

*****

A face that ’s best

By its own beauty drest,

And can alone commend the rest.

*****

A cheek where Youth,

And blood, with pen of Truth

Write, what their reader sweetly ru’th.

*****

Lips, where all day

A lover’s kiss may play,

Yet carry nothing thence away.

*****

Eyes, that displace

The neighbour diamond, and out-face

That sunshine, by their own sweet grace.

Tresses, that wear

Jewels, but to declare

How much themselves more precious are.

*****

Days, that need borrow,

No part of their good morrow,

From a forespent night of sorrow.

*****

Life, that dares send

A challenge to his end,

And when it comes say, Welcome friend!

*****

I wish her store

Of worth may leave her poor

Of wishes; and I wish—no more.

Now if Time knows

That her, whose radiant brows

Weave them a garland of my vows;

Her that dares be,

What these lines wish to see:

I seek no further: it is she.