Farewell to Love

WHILST yet to prove

I thought there was some deity in love,

So did I reverence, and gave

Worship; as atheists at their dying hour

Call, what they cannot name, an unknown power,

As ignorantly did I crave.

Thus when

Things not yet known are coveted by men,

Our desires give them fashion, and so

As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow.

But, from late fair,

His highness sitting in a golden chair

Is not less cared for after three days

By children, than the thing which lovers so

Blindly admire, and with such worship woo;

Being had, enjoying it decays;

And thence,

What before pleased them all, takes but one sense,

And that so lamely, as it leaves behind

A kind of sorrowing dullness to the mind.

Ah, cannot we,

As well as cocks and lions, jocund be

After such pleasures, unless wise

Nature decreed—since each such act, they say,

Diminisheth the length of life a day—

This; as she would man should despise

The sport,

Because that other curse of being short,

And only for a minute made to be

Eager, desires to raise posterity.

Since so, my mind

Shall not desire what no man else can find;

I’ll no more dote and run

To pursue things which had endamaged me;

And when I come where moving beauties be,

As men do when the summer’s sun

Grows great,

Though I admire their greatness, shun their heat.

Each place can afford shadows; if all fail,

’Tis but applying worm-seed to the tail.