The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Poems
• Venus and Adonis
• The Rape of Lucrece
• Sonnets
• A Lover’s Complaint
• The Passionate Pilgrim
• Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music
• The PhŒnix and the Turtle

THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM

• • I.

  • When my love swears that she is made of truth,
  • I do believe her, though I know she lies,
  • That she might think me some untutor’d youth,
  • Unskilful in the world’s false forgeries.
  • Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
  • Although I know my years be past the best,6
  • I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,
  • Outfacing faults in love with love’s ill rest.
  • But wherefore says my love that she is young?
  • And wherefore say not I that I am old?
  • O! love’s best habit is a soothing tongue,
  • And age, in love, loves not to have years told.12
  • Therefore I’ll lie with love, and love with me,
  • Since that our faults in love thus smother’d be.

• • II.

  • Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
  • Which like two spirits do suggest me still;
  • The better angel is a man, right fair,
  • The worser spirit a woman, colour’d ill.
  • To win me soon to hell, my female evil
  • Tempteth my better angel from my side,6
  • And would corrupt a saint to be a devil,
  • Wooing his purity with her fair pride:
  • And whether that my angel be turn’d fiend
  • Suspect I may, but not directly tell;
  • For being both to me, both to each friend,
  • I guess one angel in another’s hell.12
  • The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt,
  • Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

• • III.

  • Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
  • ’Gainst whom the world could not hold argument,
  • Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
  • Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.
  • A woman I forswore; but I will prove,
  • Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:6
  • My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;
  • Thy grace being gain’d cures all disgrace in me.
  • My vow was breath, and breath a vapour is;
  • Then thou, fair sun, that on this earth dost shine,
  • Exhale this vapour vow; in thee it is:
  • If broken, then it is no fault of mine.12
  • If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
  • To break an oath, to win a paradise?

• • IV.

  • Sweet Cytherea, sitting by a brook
  • With young Adonis, lovely, fresh, and green,
  • Did court the lad with many a lovely look,
  • Such looks as none could look but beauty’s queen.
  • She told him stories to delight his ear;
  • She show’d him favours to allure his eye;6
  • To win his heart, she touch’d him here and there,—
  • Touches so soft still conquer chastity.
  • But whether unripe years did want conceit,
  • Or he refus’d to take her figur’d proffer,
  • The tender nibbler would not touch the bait,
  • But smile and jest at every gentle offer:12
  • Then fell she on her back, fair queen, and toward:
  • He rose and ran away; ah! fool too froward.

• • V.

  • If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?
  • O! never faith could hold, if not to beauty vow’d:
  • Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll constant prove;
  • Those thoughts, to me like oaks, to thee like osiers bow’d.
  • Study his bias leaves, and makes his book thine eyes,
  • Where all those pleasures live that art can comprehend.6
  • If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice;
  • Well learned is that tongue that well can thee commend;
  • All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder;
  • Which is to me some praise, that I thy parts admire:
  • Thine eye Jove’s lightning seems, thy voice his dreadful thunder,
  • Which, not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire,12
  • Celestial as thou art, O! do not love that wrong,
  • To sing heaven’s praise with such an earthly tongue.

• • VI.

  • Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn,
  • And scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade,
  • When Cytherea, all in love forlorn,
  • A longing tarriance for Adonis made
  • Under an osier growing by a brook,
  • A brook where Adon us’d to cool his spleen:6
  • Hot was the day; she hotter that did look
  • For his approach, that often there had been.
  • Anon he comes, and throws his mantle by,
  • And stood stark naked on the brook’s green brim:
  • The sun look’d on the world with glorious eye,
  • Yet not so wistly as this queen on him:12
  • He, spying her, bounc’d in, whereas he stood:
  • ‘O Jove,’ quoth she, ‘why was not I a flood!’

• • VII.

  • Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle;
  • Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty;
  • Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is, brittle;
  • Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty:
  • A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her,
  • None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.6
  • Her lips to mine how often hath she join’d,
  • Between each kiss her oaths of true love swearing!
  • How many tales to please me hath she coin’d,
  • Dreading my love, the loss thereof still fearing!
  • Yet in the midst of all her pure protestings,
  • Her faith, her oaths, her tears, and all were jestings.12
  • She burn’d with love, as straw with fire flameth;
  • She burn’d out love, as soon as straw outburneth;
  • She fram’d the love, and yet she foil’d the framing;
  • She bade love last, and yet she fell a-turning.
  • Was this a lover, or a lecher whether?17
  • Bad in the best, though excellent in neither.

• • VIII.

  • If music and sweet poetry agree,
  • As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
  • Then must the love be great ’twixt thee and me,
  • Because thou lov’st the one, and I the other.
  • Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
  • Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;6
  • Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such
  • As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
  • Thou lov’st to hear the sweet melodious sound
  • That Phœbus’ lute, the queen of music, makes;
  • And I in deep delight am chiefly drown’d
  • Whenas himself to singing he betakes.12
  • One god is god of both, as poets feign;
  • One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

• • IX.

  • Fair was the morn when the fair queen of love,
  • * * * * * * *
  • Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove,
  • For Adon’s sake, a youngster proud and wild;
  • Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill:
  • Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds;6
  • She, silly queen, with more than love’s good will,
  • Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds:
  • ‘Once,’ quoth she, ‘did I see a fair sweet youth
  • Here in these brakes deep-wounded with a boar,
  • Deep in the thigh, a spectacle of ruth!11
  • See, in my thigh,’ quoth she, ‘here was the sore.
  • She showed hers; he saw more wounds than one,
  • And blushing fled, and left her all alone.

• • X.

  • Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck’d, soon vaded,
  • Pluck’d in the bud, and vaded in the spring!
  • Bright orient pearl, alack! too timely shaded;
  • Fair creature, kill’d too soon by death’s sharp sting!
  • Like a green plum that hangs upon a tree,
  • And falls, through wind, before the fall should be.6
  • I weep for thee, and yet no cause I have;
  • For why thou left’st me nothing in thy will:
  • And yet thou left’st me more than I did crave;
  • For why I craved nothing of thee still:
  • O yes, dear friend, I pardon crave of thee,
  • Thy discontent thou didst bequeath to me.12

• • XI.

  • Venus, with young Adonis sitting by her
  • Under a myrtle shade, began to woo him:
  • She told the youngling how god Mars did try her,
  • And as he fell to her, so fell she to him.
  • ‘Even thus,’ quoth she, ‘the war-like god embrac’d me,’
  • And then she clipp’d Adonis in her arms;6
  • ‘Even thus,’ quoth she, ‘the war-like god unlac’d me,’
  • As if the boy should use like loving charms.
  • ‘Even thus,’ quoth she, ‘he seized on my lips,’
  • And with her lips on his did act the seizure;
  • And as she fetched breath, away he skips,
  • And would not take her meaning nor her pleasure.12
  • Ah! that I had my lady at this bay,
  • To kiss and clip me till I ran away.

• • XII.

  • Crabbed age and youth cannot live together:
  • Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care;
  • Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
  • Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.
  • Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short;
  • Youth is nimble, age is lame;6
  • Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;
  • Youth is wild, and age is tame.
  • Age, I do abhor thee, youth, I do adore thee;
  • O! my love, my love is young:
  • Age, I do defy thee: O! sweet shepherd, hie thee,
  • For methinks thou stay’st too long.12

• • XIII.

  • Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good;
  • A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly;
  • A flower that dies when first it ’gins to bud;
  • A brittle glass that’s broken presently:
  • A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
  • Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.6
  • And as goods lost are seld or never found,
  • As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh,
  • As flowers dead lie wither’d on the ground,
  • As broken glass no cement can redress,
  • So beauty blemish’d once ’s for ever lost,
  • In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.12

• • XIV.

  • Good night, good rest. Ah! neither be my share:
  • She bade good night that kept my rest away;
  • And daff’d me to a cabin hang’d with care,
  • To descant on the doubts of my decay.
  • ‘Farewell,’ quoth she, ‘and come again to-morrow:’
  • Fare well I could not, for I supp’d with sorrow.6
  • Yet at my parting sweetly did she smile,
  • In scorn of friendship, nill I construe whether:
  • ’T may be, she joy’d to jest at my exile,
  • ’T may be, again to make me wander thither:
  • ‘Wander,’ a word for shadows like myself,11
  • As take the pain, but cannot pluck the pelf.
  • Lord! how mine eyes throw gazes to the east;
  • My heart doth charge the watch; the morning rise
  • Doth cite each moving sense from idle rest.
  • Not daring trust the office of mine eyes,
  • While Philomela sits and sings, I sit and mark,
  • And wish her lays were tuned like the lark;18
  • For she doth welcome daylight with her ditty,
  • And drives away dark dismal-dreaming night:
  • The night so pack’d, I post unto my pretty;
  • Heart hath his hope, and eyes their wished sight;
  • Sorrow chang’d to solace, solace mix’d with sorrow;
  • For why, she sigh’d and bade me come to-morrow.24
  • Were I with her, the night would post too soon;
  • But now are minutes added to the hours;
  • To spite me now, each minute seems a moon;
  • Yet not for me, shine sun to succour flowers!
  • Pack night, peep day; good day, of night now borrow:
  • Short, night, to-night, and length thyself to-morrow.30