Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583–1648)

An Ode upon a Question Moved Whether Love Should Continue for Ever

HAVING interr’d her Infant-birth

The watery ground that late did mourn

Was strew’d with flowers for the return

Of the wish’d bridegroom of the earth.

The well-accorded birds did sing

Their hymns unto the pleasant time,

And in a sweet consorted chime

Did welcome in the cheerful spring.

To which, soft whistles of the wind,

And warbling murmurs of a brook,

And varied notes of leaves that shook,

An harmony of parts did bind.

When with a love none can express

That mutually happy pair,

Melander and Celinda fair,

The season with their loves did bless.

Long their fix’d eyes to Heaven bent

Unchangèd, they did never move;

As if so great and pure a love

No glass but it could represent.

When with a sweet though troubled look

She first brake silence, saying, ‘Dear friend,

O that our love might take no end,

Or never had beginning took.’

Then with a look, it seem’d, denied

All earthly power but hers, yet so

As if to her breath he did owe

This borrow’d life, he thus replied:

‘O no, Belov’d, I am most sure

These vertuous habits we acquire

As being with the soul entire

Must with it evermore endure.

Else should our souls in vain elect,

And vainer yet were Heaven’s laws,

When to an everlasting cause

They give a perishing effect.

Nor here on earth then, nor above,

One good affection can impair;

For where God doth admit the fair,

Think you that He excludeth Love?

These eyes again thine eyes shall see,

These hands again thine hand enfold,

And all chaste blessings can be told

Shall with us everlasting be.

For if no use of sense remain

When bodies once this life forsake,

Or they could no delight partake,

Why should they ever rise again?

And if every imperfect mind

Make love the end of knowledge here,

How perfect will our love be where

All imperfection is refin’d.

Let then no doubt, Celinda, touch,

Much less your fairest mind invade;

Were not our souls immortal made,

Our equal loves can make them such.

So when from hence we shall be gone,

And be no more, nor you, nor I;

As one another’s mystery

Each shall be both, yet both but one.