Ye blushing virgins happy are
In the chaste nunnery of her breasts,
For he ’d profane so chaste a fair,
Who e’er should call them Cupid’s nests.

Transplanted thus how bright ye grow,
How rich a perfume do ye yield!
In some close garden cowslips...

That which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind;
No monarch but would give his crown,
His arms might do what this hath done.

It was my heaven’s extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer:
My joy, my grief, my...

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep,
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;
For in pure love heaven did prepare...

Poet: Thomas Carew

    GO, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me,
    That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.

    Tell her that ’s young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
    That hadst thou sprung...

Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flowes
That liquefaction of her clothes.

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glittering taketh me!

From “Tyrannic Love,” Act IV. Sc. 1.

AH, how sweet it is to love!
  Ah, how gay is young desire!
And what pleasing pains we prove
  When we first approach love’s fire!
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.

Sighs which...

Poet: John Dryden

    Welcome, welcome, do I sing,
    Far more welcome than the spring;
    He that parteth from you never
    Shall enjoy a spring forever.

Love, that to the voice is near,
  Breaking from your ivory pale,
Need not walk abroad to hear
  ...

Love still has something of the sea,
  From whence his Mother rose;
No time his slaves from love can free,
  Nor give their thoughts repose.

They are becalmed in clearest days,
  And in rough weather tost;
They wither under cold delays,...

Whoe’er she be,
That not impossible She
That shall command my heart and me:

Where’er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth
Of studied Fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps tread...

Shall I tell you whom I love?
  Hearken then awhile to me;
And if such a woman move
  As I now shall versify,
Be assured ’t is she or none,
That I love, and love alone.

Nature did her so much right
  As she scorns the help of art....