| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | On a Girdle | | By Edmund Waller (1606–1687) |
| | | 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 has done. | |
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| It was my Heaven’s extremest sphere, | 5 |
| The pale which held that lovely deer: | |
| My joy, my grief, my hope, my love, | |
| Did all within this circle move. | |
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| A narrow compass! and yet there | |
| Dwelt all that’s good, and all that’s fair! | 10 |
| Give me but what this ribband bound, | |
| Take all the rest the sun goes round! | | | | |
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