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

Sir Charles Sedley (1639–1701)

Song: ‘Love still has something of the Sea’

LOVE still has something of the sea,

From whence his Mother rose;

No time his slaves from love can free,

Nor give their thoughts repose.

They are becalm’d in clearest days,

And in rough weather tost;

They wither under cold delays,

Or are in tempests lost.

One while they seem to touch the port,

Then straight into the main

Some angry wind in cruel sport

Their vessel drives again.

At first disdain and pride they fear,

Which, if they chance to ’scape,

Rivals and falsehood soon appear

In a more dreadful shape.

By such degrees to joy they come,

And are so long withstood,

So slowly they receive the sum,

It hardly does them good.

’Tis cruel to prolong a pain,

And to defer a bliss,

Believe me, gentle Hermoine,

No less inhuman is.

An hundred thousand oaths your fears

Perhaps would not remove,

And if I gazed a thousand years,

I could no deeper love.

’Tis fitter much for you to guess

Than for me to explain,

But grant, oh! grant that happiness,

Which only does remain.