II
14 lines✦
here between sleep and life some brief space is,With love like gold bound round about the head,Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed,Turning the fruitful feud of hers and hisTo the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss;Yet from them something like as fire is shedThat shall not be assuaged till death be dead,Though neither life nor sleep can find out this.Love made himself of flesh that perishethA pleasure-house for all the loves his kin;But on the one side sat a man like death,And on the other a woman sat like sin.So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breathLove turned himself and would not enter in.
✦