Farewell to Love
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HILST yet to proveI thought there was some deity in love,So did I reverence, and gaveWorship; as atheists at their dying hourCall, what they cannot name, an unknown power,As ignorantly did I crave.Thus whenThings not yet known are coveted by men,Our desires give them fashion, and soAs they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow. But, from late fair,His highness sitting in a golden chair,Is not less cared for after three daysBy children, than the thing which lovers soBlindly admire, and with such worship woo;Being had, enjoying it decays;And thence,What before pleased them all, takes but one sense,And that so lamely, as it leaves behindA kind of sorrowing dulness to the mind. Ah cannot we,As well as cocks and lions, jocund beAfter such pleasures, unless wiseNature decreed—since each such act, they say,Diminisheth the length of life a day—This; as she would man should despiseThe sport,Because that other curse of being short,And only for a minute made to beEager, desires to raise posterity. Since so, my mindShall not desire what no man else can find;I'll no more dote and runTo pursue things which had endamaged me;And when I come where moving beauties be,As men do when the summer's sunGrows great,Though I admire their greatness, shun their heat.Each place can afford shadows; if all fail,'Tis but applying worm-seed to the tail.
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