Tixall Poetry/For Love
For Love.
Unhappy East! not, in that aweYou pay your lords, whose will is law;But in your owne unmanly reigneO'er the soft sex, and proud disdayne.What state would bring the valew downeOf treasure, which is all their owne?Ther thoughts to worthless objects move,Who thus suppress the growth of Love.Love, that extends the high desire,Love, that improves the manly fire;And makes the price of beauty rise,And all our wishes multiplyes.Such high content dwells not in sence—Nor can the captiv'd fay re dispenseSuch sweets as these, no servile dameCan with her beauty feed this flame. Such joyes as these require a hartIn which no other love hath part.Ah! who would prise his liberty,(This faint, weak pleasure, to be free,)Deare as those wounds which love can give?Those bonds in which his servants live?—Who, tost in wandring, loose desire,Vary their love, disperse their fire;Ayme at no more but to repeateThe thirst of sence, and quench that heate.Let my collected passion rise,All, and to one a sacrifice.I feare not her discerning breastShould bee with other love imprest,Be to the proud resigned a prey,Or to the loud, or to the gay.Why should distorted nature proveMore lovely then my humble love?What taught the elder times successIn love, but humbleness?The nymphes resigned their virgin fearesTo nothing but the shepherd's tears. Nature with wise distrust doth arme,And guard that tender sex from harme.Long waiting love doth passage findInto the slow-believing mind.Jove, when he would with love comply,Is said to lay his thunder by:Too rough, he thinks, the shape of man—Now in the softness of a swan,Now like another nymph appeares,And so beguiles Calista's feares.By force, hee would have soone comprestThat which contents the ruder East:But he, by this diviner art,Makes conquest of the heavenly part.S. Godolphin.