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Home  »  The English Poets  »  Song: ‘Ask me no more where Jove bestows’

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. II. The Seventeenth Century: Ben Jonson to Dryden

Thomas Carew (1595?–1639?)

Song: ‘Ask me no more where Jove bestows’

ASK me no more where Jove bestows,

When June is past, the fading rose,

For in your beauty’s orient deep

These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

Ask me no more whither do stray

The golden atoms of the day,

For, in pure love, heaven did prepare

Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste

The nightingale when May is past,

For in your sweet dividing throat

She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars light

That downwards fall in dead of night,

For in your eyes they sit, and there

Fixëd become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west

The Phœnix builds her spicy nest,

For unto you at last she flies,

And in your fragrant bosom dies.