| |
| I’LL tell thee now (dear love) what thou shall do | |
| To anger destiny, as she doth us; | |
| How I shall stay, though she eloign me thus, | |
| And how posterity shall know it too; | |
| How thine may out-endure | 5 |
| Sibyl’s glory, and obscure | |
| Her who from Pindar could allure, | |
| And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame, | |
| And her, whose book (they say) Homer did find, and name. | |
| |
| Study our manuscripts, those myriads | 10 |
| Of letters, which have past ’twixt thee and me; | |
| Thence write our annals, and in them will be | |
| To all whom love’s subliming fire invades | |
| Rule and example found; | |
| There the faith of any ground | 15 |
| No schismatic will dare to wound, | |
| That sees, how Love this grace to us affords, | |
| To make, to keep, to use, to be these his records. | |
| |
| This book, as long-lived as the elements, | |
| Or as the world’s form, this all-gravèd tome 1 | 20 |
| In cypher writ, or new made idiom; | |
| We for Love’s clergy only are instruments; | |
| When this book is made thus, | |
| Should again the ravenous | |
| Vandals and the Goths invade us, | 25 |
| Learning were safe; in this our universe, | |
| Schools might learn sciences, spheres music, angels verse. | |
| |
| Here Love’s divines—since all divinity | |
| Is love or wonder—may find all they seek, | |
| Whether abstract 2 spiritual love they like, | 30 |
| Their souls exhaled with what they do not see; | |
| Or, loth so to amuse | |
| Faith’s infirmity, 3 they choose | |
| Something which they may see and use; | |
| For, though mind be the heaven, where love doth sit, | 35 |
| Beauty a convenient type may be to figure it. | |
| |
| Here more than in their books may lawyers find, | |
| Both by what titles mistresses are ours, | |
| And how prerogative these states devours, | |
| Transferr’d from Love himself, to womankind; | 40 |
| Who, though from heart and eyes, | |
| They exact great subsidies, | |
| Forsake him who on them relies; | |
| And for the cause, honour, or conscience give; | |
| Chimeras vain as they or their prerogative. | 45 |
| |
| Here statesmen—or of them, they which can read— | |
| May of their occupation find the grounds; | |
| Love, and their art, alike it deadly wounds, | |
| If to consider what ’tis, one proceed. | |
| In both they do excel, | 50 |
| Who the present govern well, | |
| Whose weakness none doth, or dares tell; | |
| In this thy book, such will there something 4 see, | |
| As in the Bible some can find out alchemy. | |
| |
| Thus vent 5 thy thoughts; abroad I’ll study thee, | 55 |
| As he removes far off, that great heights takes; | |
| How great love is, presence best trial makes, | |
| But absence tries how long this love will be; | |
| To take a latitude | |
| Sun, or stars, are fitliest view’d | 60 |
| At their brightest, but to conclude | |
| Of longitudes, what other way have we, | |
| But to mark when and where the dark eclipses be? | |
