| |
| TRUE love’s own talisman, which here | |
| Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach, | |
| A steel-and-velvet Cavalier | |
| Gave to our Saxon speech: | |
| |
| Chief miracle of theme and touch | 5 |
| That upstart enviers adore: | |
| I could not love thee, dear, so much, | |
| Loved I not Honour more. | |
| |
| No critic born since Charles was king | |
| But sighed in smiling, as he read: | 10 |
| “Here ’s theft of the supremest thing | |
| A poet might have said!” | |
| |
| Young knight and wit and beau, who won, | |
| Mid war’s adventure, ladies’ praise, | |
| Was ’t well of you, ere you had done, | 15 |
| To blight our modern bays? | |
| |
| O yet to you, whose random hand | |
| Struck from the dark whole gems like these, | |
| Archaic beauty, never planned | |
| Nor reared by wan degrees, | 20 |
| |
| Which leaves an artist poor, and art | |
| An earldom richer all her years; | |
| To you, dead on your shield apart, | |
| Be “Ave!” passed in tears. | |
| |
| How shall this singing era spurn | 25 |
| Her master, and in lauds be loath? | |
| Your worth, your work, bid us discern | |
| Light exquisite in both. | |
| |
| ’T was virtue’s breath inflamed your lyre, | |
| Heroic from the heart it ran; | 30 |
| Nor for the shedding of such fire | |
| Lives since a manlier man. | |
| |
| And till your strophe sweet and bold | |
| So lovely aye, so lonely long, | |
| Love’s self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold | 35 |
| The pinnacles of song. | |
| |
