Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Edmund Waller (1606–1687)

On a Girdle

THAT which her slender waist confined,

Shall now my joyful temples bind;

No monarch but would give his crown

His arms might do what this has done.

It was my heaven’s extremest sphere,

The pale which held that lovely deer,

My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,

Did all within this circle move.

A narrow compass, and yet there

Dwelt all that ’s good and all that ’s fair;

Give me but what this ribband bound,

Take all the rest the sun goes round.