VI. “O, let me not serve so, as those men serve”

O, LET me not serve so, as those men serve,

Whom honour’s smokes at once fatten and starve,

Poorly enrich’d with great men’s words or looks;

Nor so write my name in thy loving books

As those idolatrous flatterers, which still

Their princes’ style with many realms fulfil,

Whence they no tribute have, and where no sway.

Such services I offer as shall pay

Themselves; I hate dead names. O, then let me

Favourite in ordinary, or no favourite be.

When my soul was in her own body sheathed,

Not yet by oaths betroth’d, nor kisses breathed

Into my purgatory, faithless thee,

Thy heart seemed wax, and steel thy constancy.

So careless flowers strew’d on the water’s face

The curled whirlpools suck, smack, and embrace,

Yet drown them; so the taper’s beamy eye

Amorously twinkling beckons the giddy fly,

Yet burns his wings; and such the devil is,

Scarce visiting them who are entirely his.

When I behold a stream, which from the spring

Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring,

Or in a speechless slumber, calmly ride

Her wedded channel’s bosom, and there chide,

And bend her brows, and swell, if any bough

Do but stoop down to kiss her utmost brow;

Yet, if her often gnawing kisses win

The traitorous banks to gape, and let her in,

She rusheth violently, and doth divorce

Her from her native and her long-kept course,

And roars, and braves it, and in gallant scorn,

In flattering eddies promising return,

She flouts her channel, which thenceforth is dry;

Then say I; “That is she, and this am I.”

Yet let not thy deep bitterness beget

Careless despair in me, for that will whet

My mind to scorn; and O, love dull’d with pain

Was ne’er so wise, nor well arm’d, as disdain.

Then with new eyes I shall survey thee, and spy

Death in thy cheeks, and darkness in thine eye,

Though hope bred faith and love; thus taught, I shall,

As nations do from Rome, from thy love fall;

My hate shall outgrow thine, and utterly

I will renounce thy dalliance; and when I

Am the recusant, in that resolute state

What hurts it me to be excommunicate?