Give me more love or more disdain;
The torrid or the frozen zone
Brings equal ease unto my pain;
The temperate affords me none;
Either extreme, of love or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.
Give me a storm; If it be love,
Like...
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Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Pr’y thee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Pr’y thee, why so pale?
Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Pr’y thee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can...
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“WHEN your beauty appears,
In its graces and airs,
All bright as an angel new dropt from the skies,
At distance I gaze, and am awed by my fears,
So strangely you dazzle my eyes!
“But when without art
Your kind thoughts you...
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From “Paradise Lost,” Book VIII.
MINE eyes he closed, but open left the cell
Of fancy, my internal sight, by which
Abstract, as in a trance, methought I saw,
Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the shape
Still glorious before whom awake I stood;
...
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From “Paradise Lost,” Book IX.
O FAIREST of creation, last and best
Of all God’s works, creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!
How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,
Defaced,...
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From the French of W. F. Nokes
From “Polyeucte”
SEVERUS— I stand agaze,
Rooted, confounded, in sheer wonderment.
Such blind resolve is so unparalleled,
I scarce may trust the witness of mine ears.
A heart that loves you—and what...
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From “a Ballad upon a Wedding”
* * * * *THE MAID, and thereby hangs a tale,
For such a maid no Whitsun-ale
Could ever yet produce:
No grape that ’s kindly ripe could be
So round, so plump, so soft as she,
Nor half...
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From the “Examen Miscellaneum,” 1708
THE FIRE of love in youthful blood,
Like what is kindled in brushwood,
But for a moment burns;
Yet in that moment makes a mighty noise;
It crackles, and to vapor turns,
And soon itself destroys....
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Tell me not, sweet, I am unkinde,
That from the nunnerie
Of thy chaste breast and quiet minde,
To warre and armes I flee.
True, a new mistresse now I chase.—
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith imbrace
A sword, a...
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IF to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that, when I am gone,
You or I were alone;
Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blustering wind or swallowing wave.
But I ’ll not sigh one blast or gale
To swell...
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