Which never words or wits malicious,

Which never honour's bait, or world's fame, Achieved by attempts adventurous,

Or aught beneath the sun or heaven's frame

Can so dissolve, dissever, or destroy

The essential love of no frail parts compounded, Though of the same now buried be the joy,

The hope, the comfort, and the sweetness ended, But that the thoughts and memories of these Work a relapse of passion, and remain Of my sad heart the sorrow-sucking bees;

The wrongs received, the frowns persuade in vain.

And though these medicines work desire to end,
And are in others the true cure of liking,
The salves that heal love's wounds, and do amend
Consuming woe, and slake our hearty sighing,

They work not so in thy mind's long decease;
External fancy time alone recureth:
All whose effects do wear away with ease

Love of delight, while such delight endureth ; Stays by the pleasure, but no longer stays

But in my mind so is her love inclosed,

And is thereof not only the best part,

But into it the essence is disposed:

Oh love! (the more my woe) to it thou art

Even as the moisture in each plant that grows;
Even as the sun unto the frozen ground;
Even as the sweetness to the incarnate rose ;
Even as the centre in each perfect round:

As water to the fish, to men as air,

As heat to fire, as light unto the sun;
Oh love! it is but vain to say thou were;
Ages and times cannot thy power outrun.

Thou art the soul of that unhappy mind

Which, being by nature made an idle thought, Began even then to take immortal kind,

When first her virtues in thy spirits wrought.

From thee therefore that mover cannot move,
Because it is become thy cause of being;
Whatever error may obscure that love,
Whatever frail effect in mortal living,

Whatever passion from distempered heart,
What absence, time, or injuries effect,
What faithless friends or deep dissembled art
Present to feed her most unkind suspect.

Is strongly drawn when violent heat hath vent,
Great clefts therein, till moisture do abound,
And then the same, imprisoned and uppent,

Breaks out in earthquakes tearing all asunder;
So, in the centre of my cloven heart—
My heart, to whom her beauties were such wonder-
Lies the sharp poisoned head of that love's dart

Which, till all break and all dissolve to dust,
Thence drawn it cannot be, or therein known:
There, mixed with my heart-blood, the fretting rust
The better part hath eaten and outgrown.

But what of those or these? or what of ought Of that which was, or that which is, to treat? What I possess is but the same I sought:

My love was false, my labours were deceit.

Nor less than such they are esteemed to be;
A fraud bought at the price of many woes;
A guile, whereof the profits unto me-

Could it be thought premeditate for those?

Witness those withered leaves left on the tree,
The sorrow-worn face, the pensive mind;
The external shews what may the internal be:

Cold care hath bitten both the root and rind.

But stay, my thoughts, make end: give fortune way: Harsh is the voice of woe and sorrow's sound: Complaints cure not, and tears do but allay

Griefs for a time, which after more abound.

To seek for moisture in the Arabian sand
Is but a loss of labour and of rest:

The links which time did break of hearty bands

Words cannot knit, or wailings make anew.

Seek not the sun in clouds when it is set.
On highest mountains, where those cedars grew,
Against whose banks the troubled ocean beat,

And were the marks to find thy hoped port,
Into a soil far off themselves remove.

On Sestus' shore, Leander's late resort,
Hero hath left no lamp to guide her love.

Thou lookest for light in vain, and storms arise;
She sleeps thy death, that erst thy danger sighed;

E

Strive then no more; bow down thy weary eyes— Eyes which to all these woes thy heart have

guided.

She is gone, she is lost, she is found, she is ever fair : Sorrow draws weakly, where love draws not too : Woe's cries sound nothing, but only in love's ear. Do then by dying what life cannot do.

Unfold thy flocks and leave them to the fields,

To feed on hills, or dales, where likes them best, Of what the summer or the spring-time yields, For love and time hath given thee leave to rest.

Thy heart which was their fold, now in decay
By often storms and winter's many blasts,
All torn and rent becomes misfortune's prey;
False hope my shepherd's staff, now age hath
brast

My pipe, which love's own hand gave my desire To sing her praises and my woe upon,— Despair hath often threatened to the fire,

As vain to keep now all the rest are gone.

Thus home I draw, as death's long night draws on ;
Yet every foot, old thoughts turn back mine eyes:
Constraint me guides, as old age draws a stone
Against the hill, which over-weighty lies

For feeble arms or wasted strength to move :
My steps are backward, gazing on my loss,
My mind's affection and my soul's sole love,
Not mixed with fancy's chaff or fortune's dross.

To God I leave it, who first

gave it me,

And I her gave, and she returned again,
As it was hers; so let His mercies be
Of my last comforts the essential mean.
But be it so or not, the effects are past;
Her love hath end; my woe must ever last.

The end of the books of the "Ocean's Love to Cynthia," and the beginning of the 22nd book, entreating of Sorrow.

My days' delights, my spring-time joys fordone, Which in the dawn and rising sun of youth Had their creation, and were first begun,

Do in the evening and the winter sad

Present my mind, which takes my time's account, The grief remaining of the joy it had.

My times that then ran o'er themselves in these, And now run out in other's happiness,

Bring unto those new joys and new-born days. So could she not if she were not the sun,

Which sees the birth and burial of all else, And holds that power with which she first begun, Leaving each withered body to be torn

By fortune, and by times tempestuous,

Which, by her virtue, once fair fruit have born; Knowing she can renew, and can create Green from the ground, and flowers even out of stone, By virtue lasting over time and date,

Leaving us only woe, which, like the moss,

Having compassion of unburied bones,

Cleaves to mischance, and unrepaired loss.

For tender stalks

(MS. abruptly ends here.)