ANONYMOUS My Love in her AttireBEN JONSON On My First SonANNE BRADSTREET To My Dear and Loving HusbandWILLIAM BLAKE Infant SorrowWILLIAM BLAKE An Old Maid Early
Struggling in my father's hands, O I cannot, cannot find
My love in her attire doth show her wit,
It doth so well become her:
For every season she hath dressings fit,
For winter, spring, and summer.
No beauty she doth miss
When all her robes are on;
But Beauty's self she is
When all her robes are gone.
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
And, if no other misery, yet age!
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry;
For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye woman, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor aught but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so perserver,
That when we live no more we may live ever.
My mother groaned, my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Striving against my swaddling bands,
Bound and weary, I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast.
An old maid early - e'er I knew
Aught but the love that on me grew;
And now I'm covered o'er and o'er
And wish that I had been a whore.
The undaunted courage of a virgin mind:
For early I in love was crossed,
Before my flower of love was lost.
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