Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Richard Crashaw (c. 1613–1649)

Wishes. To His Supposed Mistress

WHOE’ER she be,

That not impossible she

That shall command my heart and me;

Where’er she lie,

Lock’d up from mortall eye,

In shady leaves of Destiny;

Till that ripe birth

Of studied Fate stand forth,

And teach her fair steps tread our Earth;

Till that divine

Idea, take a shrine

Of crystal flesh, through which to shine;

Meet you her, my wishes,

Bespeak her to my blisses,

And be ye call’d, my absent kisses.

I wish her, beauty

That owes not all its duty

To gaudy tire or glistring shoe tie.

A face that ’s best

By its own beauty drest,

And can alone commend the rest.

A cheek where Youth,

And blood, with pen of Truth

Write, what their reader sweetly ru’th.

Lips, where all day

A lover’s kiss may play,

Yet carry nothing thence away.

Eyes, that displace

The neighbour diamond, and out-face

That sunshine, by their own sweet grace.

Tresses, that wear

Jewels, but to declare

How much themselves more precious are.

Days, that need borrow,

No part of their good morrow,

From a forespent night of sorrow.

Life, that dares send

A challenge to his end,

And when it comes say, Welcome friend!

I wish her store

Of worth may leave her poor

Of wishes; and I wish—no more.

Now if Time knows

That her, whose radiant brows

Weave them a garland of my vows;

Her that dares be,

What these lines wish to see:

I seek no further: it is she.