• False world, thou ly’st: thou canst not lend
              The least delight:
    Thy favors cannot gain a friend,
              They are so slight:
    Thy morning pleasures make an end
              To please at night:
    Poor are the wants that thou supply’st,
    And yet thou vaunt’st, and yet thou vy’st
    With heaven: fond earth, thou boasts; false world...

  • I Love, and have some cause to love, the earth,—
      She is my Maker’s creature, therefore good;
    She is my mother, for she gave me birth;
      She is my tender nurse, she gives me food:
      But what ’s a creature, Lord, compared with thee?
      Or what ’s my mother or my nurse to me?

    I love the air,—her dainty sweets refresh
      My drooping soul,...

  • E’en like two little bank-dividing brooks,
        That wash the pebbles with their wanton streams,
    And having ranged and searched a thousand nooks,
        Meet both at length in silver-breasted Thames,
        Where in a greater current they conjoin:
    So I my Best-Belovèd’s am; so He is mine.

    E’en so we met; and after long pursuit,
        E’en so we...