36 quotes
So though a virgin, yet a bride
To every Grace, she justified
A chaste polygamy, and died.
Poems (1640)
Ask me no more if east or west
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.
When thou, poor excommunicate
From all the joys of love, shalt see
The full reward and glorious fate
Which my strong faith shall purchase me,
Then curse thine own inconstancy.
Poems (1640)
If she repent, and would make me amends,
Bid her but send me hers, and we are friends.
Poems (1640)
The Muses’ garden with pedantic weeds
O’erspread, was purged by thee; the lazy seeds
Of servile imitation thrown away,
And fresh invention planted.
Poems (1640)
So grieves th' advent'rous merchant, when he throws
All his long-toil'd-for treasure his ship stows
Into the angry main.
Poems (1640)
If the stout foe will not resign,
When I besiege a town,
I lose but what was never mine;
But he that is cast down
From enjoy’d beauty, feels a woe
Only deposèd kings can know.
Poems (1640)
Think not, 'cause men flatt'ring say,
Y' are fresh as April, sweet as May,
Bright as the morning star,
That you are so.
Poems (1640)
And here the precious dust is laid,
Whose purely tempered clay was made
So fine that it the guest betrayed.
Else the soul grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sin,
And so was hatched a cherubin.
Poems (1640)
Stand still, you floods, do not deface
That image which you bear:
So votaries, from every place,
To you shall altars rear. No winds but lovers' sighs blow here,
To trouble these glad streams,
On which no star from any sphere
Did ever dart such beams.
Poems (1640)
No tears, Celia, now shall win
My resolved heart to return;
I have search'd thy soul within,
And find nought but pride and scorn;
I have learned thy arts, and now
Can disdain as much as thou.
Poems (1640)
To lead, or brass, or some such bad
Metal, a prince's stamp may add
That value, which it never had.
But to the pure refined ore,
The stamp of kings imparts no more
Worth, than the metal held before.
Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;
Give me more love or more disdain;
The torrid or the frozen zone:
Bring equal ease unto my pain;
The temperate affords me none:
Either extreme, of love or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.
Poems (1640)
Thou like a sea of milke shalt lye display’d,
Whilst I the smooth, calme Ocean, invade
With such a tempest, as when Jove of old
Fell downe on Danae in a storme of gold
Ask me why this flower does show
So yellow-green, and sickly too?
Ask me why the stalk is weak
And bending, yet it doth not break?
I will answer: These discover
What doubts and fears are in a lover.
Poems (1640)
It is not beauty I demand,
A crystal brow, the moon's despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand,
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair.
Misattributed