Drink to me Only With Thine Eyes
Romantic verses by Ben Jonson

An Elegy

By those bright eyes, at whose immortal fires
Love lights his torches to inflame desires ;
By that fair stand, your forehead, whence he bends
His double bow, and round his arrows sends ;
By that tall grove, your hair, whose globy rings
He flying curls, and crispeth with his wings ;
By those pure baths your either cheek discloses,
Where he doth steep himself in milk and roses ;
And lastly, by your lips, the bank of kisses,
Where men at once may plant and gather blisses :
Tell me, my lov'd friend, do you love or no ?
So well as I may tell in verse, 'tis so ?
You blush, but do not : — friends are either none,
Though they may number bodies, or but one.
I'll therefore ask no more, but bid you love,
And so that either example prove
Unto the other ;  and live patterns, how
Others, in time, may love as we do now.
Slip no occasion ;  as time stands not still,
I know no beauty, nor no youth that will.
To use the present, then, is not abuse,
You have a husband is the just excuse
Of all that can be done him ;  such a one
As would make shift to make himself alone
That which we can ;  who both in you, his wife,
His issue, and all circumstance of life,
As in his place, because he would not vary,
Is constant to be extraordinary.

 

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