The Canonization

For Godsake hold your tongue, and let me love,Or chide my palsie, or my gout,My five gray haires, or ruin'd fortune flout,With wealth your state, your minde with Arts improve,Take you a course, get you a place,Observe his honour, or his grace,Or the Kings reall, or his stamped faceContemplate, what you will, approve,So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injur'd by my love?What merchants ships have my sighs drown'd?Who saies my teares have overflow'd his ground?When did my colds a forward spring remove?When did the heats which my veines fillAdde one more to the plaguie Bill?Soldiers finde warres, and Lawyers finde out stillLitigious men, which quarrels move,Though she and I do love.

Call us what you will, wee are made such by love;Call her one, mee another flye,We'are Tapers too, and at our owne cost die,And wee in us finde the'Eagle and the Dove.The Phœnix ridle hath more witBy us, we two being one, are it.So to one neutrall thing both sexes fit,Wee dye and rise the same, and proveMysterious by this love.

Wee can dye by it, if not live by love,And if unfit for tombes and hearseOur legend bee, it will be fit for verse;And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove,We'll build in sonnets pretty roomes;As well a well wrought urne becomesThe greatest ashes, as halfe-acre tombes,And by these hymnes, all shall approveUs Canoniz'd for Love:

And thus invoke us; You whom reverend loveMade one anothers hermitage;You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;Who did the whole worlds soule contract, and droveInto the glasses of your eyes(So made such mirrors, and such spies,That they did all to you epitomize,)Countries, Townes, Courts: Beg from aboveA patterne of your love!

I am two fooles, I know,For loving, and for saying soIn whining Poëtry;But where's that wiseman, that would not be I,If she would not deny?Then as th'earths inward narrow crooked lanesDo purge sea waters fretfull salt away,I thought, if I could draw my paines,Through Rimes vexation, I should them allay,Griefe brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.

But when I have done so,Some man, his art and voice to show,Doth Set and sing my paine,And, by delighting many, frees againeGriefe, which verse did restraine.To Love, and Griefe tribute of Verse belongs,But not of such as pleases when'tis read,Both are increased by such songs:For both their triumphs so are published,And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee.

If yet I have not all thy love,Deare, I shall never have it all,I cannot breath one other sigh, to move,Nor can intreat one other teare to fall,And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,Sighs, teares, and oathes, and letters I have spent.Yet no more can be due to mee,Then at the bargaine made was ment,If then thy gift of love were partiall,That some to mee, some should to others fall,Deare, I shall never have Thee All.

Or if then thou gavest mee all,All was but All, which thou hadst then;But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall,New love created bee, by other men,Which have their stocks intire, and can in teares,In sighs, in oathes, and letters outbid mee,This new love may beget new feares,For, this love was not vowed by thee.And yet it was, thy gift being generall,The ground, thy heart is mine, what ever shallGrow there, deare, I should have it all.

Yet I would not have all yet,Hee that hath all can have no more,And since my love doth every day admitNew growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it:Loves riddles are, that though thy heart depart,It stayes at home, and thou with losing savest it:But wee will have a way more liberall,Then changing hearts, to joyne them, so wee shallBe one, and one anothers All.

Except mine come when thine doth part

Perchance mine comes, when thine doth parte,And by such losing it, &c. JC