| |
| I SAW a vision yesternight | |
| Enough to sate a Seeker’s 1 sight; | |
| I wished myself a Shaker 2 there, | |
| And her quick pants my trembling sphere. | |
| It was a she so glittering bright, | 5 |
| You’d think her soul an Adamite; 3 | |
| A person of so rare a frame, | |
| Her body might be lined with the same. | |
| Beauty’s chiefest maid of honour, | |
| You may break Lent with looking on her. | 10 |
| Not the fair Abbess of the skies 4 | |
| With all her nunnery of eyes | |
| Can show me such a glorious prize! | |
| |
| And yet because ’tis more renown | |
| To make a shadow shine, she’s brown,— | 15 |
| A brown for which Heaven would disband | |
| The galaxy and stars be tanned; | |
| Brown by reflection as her eye | |
| Dazzle’s the summer’s livery. | |
| Old dormant windows must confess | 20 |
| Her beams their glimmering spectacles; | |
| Struck with the splendour of her face | |
| Do the office of a burning glass. | |
| Now where such radiant lights have shown | |
| No wonder if her cheeks be grown | 25 |
| Sunburned, with lustre of her own. | |
| |
| My sight took pay but (thank my charms!) | |
| I now impale her in mine arms,— | |
| (Love’s compasses confining you, | |
| Good angels, to a circle too.) | 30 |
| Is not the universe straight-laced | |
| When I can clasp it in the waist? | |
| My amorous folds about thee hurled | |
| With Drake I girdle in the world; | |
| I hoop the firmament, and make | 35 |
| This, my embrace, the zodiac. | |
| How could thy center take my sense | |
| When admiration doth commence | |
| At the extreme circumference? | |
| |
| Now to the melting kiss that sips | 40 |
| The jellied philtre of her lips; | |
| So sweet there is no tongue can praise’t | |
| Till transubstantiate with a taste. | |
| Inspired like Mahomet from above | |
| By the billing of my heavenly dove | 45 |
| Love prints his signets in her smacks, | |
| Those ruddy drops of squeezing wax, | |
| Which, wheresoever she imparts, | |
| They’ve privy seals to take up hearts. | |
| Our mouths encountering at the sport | 50 |
| My slippery soul had quit the fort | |
| But that she stopped the sally-port. | |
| |
| Next to these sweets, her lips dispence | |
| (As twin conserves of eloquence,) | |
| The sweet perfume of her breath affords, | 55 |
| Incorporating with her words. | |
| No rosary this votress needs,— | |
| Her very syllables are beads; | |
| No sooner ’twixt those rubies born, | |
| But jewels are in ear-rings worn. | 60 |
| With that delight her speech doth enter; | |
| It is a kiss of the second venter. 5 | |
| And I dissolve at what I hear | |
| As if another Rosamond were | |
| Couched in the labyrinth of my ear. | 65 |
| |
| Yet that’s but a preludious bliss, | |
| Two souls pickeering in a kiss. | |
| Embraces do but draw the line, | |
| ’Tis storming that must take her in. | |
| When bodies join and victory hovers | 70 |
| ’Twixt the equal fluttering lovers, | |
| This is the game; make stakes, my dear! | |
| Hark, how the sprightly chanticleer, | |
| (That Baron Tell-clock of the night,) | |
| Sounds boutesel to Cupid’s knight. | 75 |
| Then have at all, the pass is got, | |
| For coming off, oh, name it not! | |
| Who would not die upon the spot? | |
