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Home  »  The Book of Elizabethan Verse  »  John Fletcher (1579–1625)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

What the Mighty Love Has Done

John Fletcher (1579–1625)

HEAR, ye ladies that despise,

What the mighty Love has done;

Fear examples and be wise:

Fair Calisto was a nun;

Leda, sailing on a stream

To deceive the hopes of man,

Love accounting but a dream,

Doted on a silver swan;

Danaë, in a brazen tower,

Where no love was, loved a shower.

Hear, ye ladies that are coy,

What the mighty Love can do;

Fear the fierceness of the boy:

The chaste Moon he makes to woo;

Vesta, kindling holy fires,

Circled round about with spies,

Never dreaming loose desires,

Doting at the altar dies;

Ilion, in a short hour, higher

He can build, and once more fire.