Whilst youth and error led my wand’ring mind

Her smiles are lightning, though her pride despair;And her disdains are gall, her favors honey.A modest maid, deck’d with a blush of honor,Whose feet do tread green paths of youth and love,The wonder of all eyes that look upon her,Sacred on earth, design’d a saint above.Chastity and Beauty, which are deadly foes,Live reconciled friends within…

That never found my fortune but in waning,With still fresh cares my present woes assailing.Yet her I blame not, though she might have blest me,But my desire’s wings, so high aspiring,Now melted with the sun that hath possess’d me,Down do I fall from off my high desiring,And in my fall do cry for speedy speedy.No…

To check the world, how they entomb’d have lyenWithin themselves, and on them plows have ear’d.Yet for all that no barbarous hand attain’dThe spoil of fame deserv’d by virtuous men,Whose glorious actions luckily had gain’dTh’eternal Annals of a happier pen.Why then, though Delia fade, let that not move her,Though Time do spoil her of the…

My heavy fortune is much like the same:I work on flint, and that’s the cause I moan.For hapless, lo, ev’n with mine own desires,I figur’d on the table of my heartThe fairest form, the world’s eye admires,And so did perish by my proper art.And still I toil, to change the marble breastOf her, whose sweetest…

Are they shadows that we see?And can shadows pleasure give?Pleasures only shadows beCast by bodies we conceive,And are made the things we deem,In those figures which they seem.But these pleasures vanish fast,Which by shadows are exprest:Pleasures are not, if they last,In their passing, is their best.Glory is most bright and gayIn a flash, and so…

If hunger-starven thought so long retain’d,Fed but with smoke, and cherished but with fire,And if a brow with care’s characters paintedBewrays my love, with broken words half spokenTo her that sits in my thought’s temple sainted,And lays to view my vulture-gnawn heart open,If I have done due homage to her eyes,And had my sighs still…