To teach the sea what it may do too soon.
Let not the wind example find
To do me more harm than it purposeth;
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death."
There is a lingering sweetness in these lines, for all their manifest unwisdom, that is surpassed only by a pathetic sonnet of Drayton's, where the pain of parting, bravely borne at first, grows suddenly too sharp for sufferance, and the lover's pride breaks and melts into the passion of a last appeal:—
"Since there 's no helpe,—come, let us kisse and parte.
Nay, I have done,—you get no more of me;
And I am glad,—yea, glad with all my hearte,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands forever!—cancel all our vows;
And when we meet at any time againe,
Be it not seene in either of our brows,
That we one jot of former love retaine.
"Now—at the last gaspe 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 would'st—when all have given him over—
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover."
Here, at least, we have grace of sentiment
