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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  Sonnet: ‘Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part’

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Sonnet: ‘Since there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part’

By Michael Drayton (1563–1631)

SINCE there’s no help, come, let us kiss and part,—

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

That thus so clearly I myself can free:

Shake hands forever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Now, at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,

When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,—

Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,

From death to life thou mightst him yet recover!