Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Jasper Mayne. 16041672296. Time
TIME is the feather’d thing, | |
And, whilst I praise | |
The sparklings of thy looks and call them rays, | |
Takes wing, | |
Leaving behind him as he flies | 5 |
An unperceivèd dimness in thine eyes. | |
His minutes, whilst they’re told, | |
Do make us old; | |
And every sand of his fleet glass, | |
Increasing age as it doth pass, | 10 |
Insensibly sows wrinkles there | |
Where flowers and roses do appear. | |
Whilst we do speak, our fire | |
Doth into ice expire, | |
Flames turn to frost; | 15 |
And ere we can | |
Know how our crow turns swan, | |
Or how a silver snow | |
Springs there where jet did grow, | |
Our fading spring is in dull winter lost. | 20 |
Since then the Night hath hurl’d | |
Darkness, Love’s shade, | |
Over its enemy the Day, and made | |
The world | |
Just such a blind and shapeless thing | 25 |
As ’twas before light did from darkness spring, | |
Let us employ its treasure | |
And make shade pleasure: | |
Let ‘s number out the hours by blisses, | |
And count the minutes by our kisses; | 30 |
Let the heavens new motions feel | |
And by our embraces wheel; | |
And whilst we try the way | |
By which Love doth convey | |
Soul unto soul, | 35 |
And mingling so | |
Makes them such raptures know | |
As makes them entrancèd lie | |
In mutual ecstasy, | |
Let the harmonious spheres in music roll! | 40 |