Michael Drayton

You not alone, when you are still alone, O God, from you that I could private be. Since you one were, I never since was one; Since you in me, my self since out of me, Transported from my self into your being; Though either distant, present yet to either, Senseless with too much joy, each other seeing, And only absent when we are together. Give me my self and take your self again, Devise some means but how I may forsake you; So much is mine that doth with you remain, That, taking what is mine, with me I take you; You do bewitch me; O, that I could fly From my self you, or from your own self I.

Some men there be which like my method well And much commend the strangeness of my vein; Some say I have a passing pleasing strain; Some say that im my humor I excel; Some, who not kindly relish my conceit, They say, as poets do, I use to feign, And in bare words paint out my passion's pain. Thus sundry men their sundry words repeat; I pass not, I, how men affected be, Nor who commends or discommends my verse; It pleaseth me, if I my woes rehearse, And in my lines if she my love may see. Only my comfort still consists in this, Writing her praise I cannot write amiss.

To Miracle

Some, misbelieving and profane in love, When I do speak of miracles by thee, May say, that thou art flattered by me, Who only write my skill in verse to prove. See miracles, ye unbelieving, see A dumb-born Muse made t'express the mind, A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind, One by thy name, the other touching thee; Blind were mine eyes, till they were seen of thine, And mine ears deaf by thy fame healed be, My vices cur'd by virtues sprung from thee, My hopes reviv'd, which long in grave had lien, All unclean thoughts, foul spirits, cast out in me Only by virtue that proceeds from thee.

To Despair

I ever love where never hope appears, Yet hope draws on my never-hoping care, And my life's hope would die, but for despair; My never-certain joy breeds ever-certain fears; Uncertain dread gives wings unto my hope, Yet my hope's wings are laden so with fear As they cannot ascend to my hope's sphere; Though fear gives them more than a heav'nly scope, Yet this large room is bounded with despair; So my love is still fetter'd with vain hope, And liberty deprives him of his scope, And thus am I imprison'd in the air. Then, sweet despair, awhile hold up thy head, Or all my hope for sorrow will be dead.

My heart the anvil where my thoughts do beat; My words the hammers fashioning my desire; My breast the forge including all the heat; Love is the fuel which maintains the fire; My sighs the bellows which the flame increaseth, Filling mine ears with noise and nightly groaning; Toiling with pain, my labor never ceaseth, In grievous passions my woes still bemoaning; My eyes with tears against the fire striving, Whose scorching gleed my heart to cinders turneth, But with these drops the flame again reviving, Still more and more it to my torment turneth. With Sisyphus thus do I roll the stone, And turn the wheel with damned Ixion.

When like an eaglet I first found my Love, For that the virtue I thereof would know, Upon the nest I set it forth to prove If it were of that kingly kind or no; But it no sooner say my Sun appear, But on her rays with open eyes it stood, To show that I had hatch'd it for the air And rightly came from that brave mounting brood; And, when the plumes were summ'd with sweet desire, To prove the pinions it ascends the skies; Do what I could, it needsly would aspire To my Soul's Sun, those two celestial eyes. Thus from my breast, where it was bred alone, It after thee is, like an eaglet, flown.

Another to the River Anker

Clear Anker, on whose silver-sanded shore My soul-shrin'd saint, my fair Idea, lies, O blessed brook, whose milk-white swans adore The crystal stream refined by her eyes, Where sweet myrrh-breathing Zephyr in the Spring Gently distils his nectar-dropping showers, Where nightingales in Arden sit and sing Among the dainty dew-impearled flowers; Say thus, fair Brook, when thou shalt see thy Queen, "Lo, here thy shepherd spent his wand'ring years, And in these shades, dear nymph, he oft hath been, And here to thee he sacrific'd his tears." Fair Arden, thou my Tempe art alone, And thou, sweet Anker, art my Helicon.

To Humor

You cannot love, my pretty heart, and why? There was a time you told me that you would; But now again you will the same deny, If it might please you, would to God you could. What, will you hate? Nay, that you will not, neither. Nor love nor hate, how then? What will you do? What, will you keep a mean then betwixt either, Or will you love me and yet hate me, too? Yet serves this not. What next? What other shift? You will, and will not; what a coil is here. I see your craft, now I perceive your drift, And all this while I was mistaken there; Your love and hate is this, I now do prove you: You love in hate, by hate to make me love you.