| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. | | | | To a Mistress Dying | | By Sir William Davenant (1606–1668) |
| | | Lover. | Your beauty, ripe and calm and fresh | |
| As eastern summers are, | |
| Must now, forsaking time and flesh, | |
| Add light to some small star. | |
| |
| Philosopher. | Whilst she yet lives, were stars decayed, | 5 |
| Their light by hers relief might find; | |
| But Death will lead her to a shade | |
| Where Love is cold and Beauty blind. | |
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| Lover. | Lovers, whose priests all poets are, | |
| Think every mistress, when she dies, | 10 |
| Is changed at least into a star: | |
| And who dares doubt the poets wise? | |
| |
| Philosopher. | But ask not bodies doomed to die | |
| To what abode they go; | |
| Since Knowledge is but Sorrow’s spy, | 15 |
| It is not safe to know. | | | | |
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