Thomas Carew, Poems of Thomas Carew

Thomas Carew, Poems of Thomas Carew, Ed. Arthur Vincent, Ayer Company Publishers, Inc., North Stratford, NH, (Reprint 2000, of 1899 Edition)

Most fleeting, when it is most dear,
’Tis gone, while we but say ’tis here.

(Persuasions to Love, 3)


Spend not in vain your life’s short hour,
But crop in time your beauty’s flower,

(Persuasions to Love, 4)


So grieves th’advent’rous merchant, when he throws
All the long toil’d-for treasure his ship stows
Into the angry main, to save from wrack
Himself and men, as I grieve to give back
These letters: yet so powerful is your sway
As if you bid me die, I must obey.

(My Mistress Commanding Me to Return Her Letters, 10)


Looking into her mind, I might survey
An host of beauties, that in ambush lay,

[not smoothe] (My Mistress Commanding Me to Return Her Letters, 11)


No eye shall see, nor yet the sun
Descry, what thou and I have done.

(Secrecy Protested, 13)


Go, thou gentle whispering wind,
Bear this sigh, and if thou find
Where my cruel fair doth rest
Cast it in her snowy breast,
So, inflamed by my desire,
It may set her heart afire.
Those sweet kisses thou shalt gain,
Will reward thee for thy pain;
Boldly light upon her lip,
There suck odours, and thence skip
To her bosom; lastly fall
Down, and wander over all.
Range about those ivory hills,
Form whose every part distills
Amber dew; there spices grow,
There pure streams of nectar flow;
There perfume thyself, and bring
All those sweets upon thy wing.
As thou return’st, change by thy power
Every weed into a flower;
Turn each thistle to a vine,
Make the bramble eglantine;
For so rich a booty made,
Do but this, and I am paid.
Thou can’st with thy powerful blast
Heat apace, and cool as fast;
Thou can’st kindle hidden flame,
And again destroy the same:
Then, for pity, either stir
Up the fire of love in her,
That alike both flames may shine,
Or else quite extinguish mine.

(A Prayer to the Wind, Complete, 14-15)


Then crown my joys or cure my pain:
Give me more love or more disdain.

(Song. Mediocrity in Love Rejected, 16)


Oh, do not think it new idolatry;
…
But what can heaven to her glory add?
The praises she hath dead, living she had;
To day she’s now an angel is no more
Praise than she had, for she was one before.
Which of the saints can show more votaries
Than she had here? Even those that did despise
The angels, and may her, now she is one,
Did, whilst she lived, with pure devotion
Adore and worship her: her virtues had
All honour here, …

(An Elegy on the La: Pen: Sent to my Mistress Out of France, 27-8)


Fair copy of my Celia’s face,
Twin of my soul, thy perfect grace
Claims in my love an equal place.
/
Disdain not a divided heart,
Though all be hers, you shall have part:
Love is not tied to rules of art.
/
For as my soul first to her flew,
Yet stay’d with me, so now ’tis true
It dwells with her, though fled to you.
/
Then entertain this wand’ring guest,
And if not love, allow it rest:
It left not, but mistook, the nest.
/
Nor think my love, or your fair eyes,
Cheaper, ’cause from sympathies
You hold with her these flames arise.
/
To lead or brass, or some such bad
Metal, a prince’s stamp may add
That value which it never had;
/
But to the pure refined ore
The stamp of kings imparts no more
Worth than the metal held before.
/
Only the image gives the rate
To subjects; in a foreign state
’Tis prized as much for its own weight.
/
So though all other hearts resign
To your pure worth, yet you have mine
Only because you are her coin.

(To T. H., A Lady Resembling My Mistress, Complete, 35)


Though frost and snow lock’d from mine eyes
That beauty which without door lies,
Thy gardens, orchards, walks, that so
I might not all thy pleasures know;
Yet, Saxham, thou within thy gate
Art of thyself so delicate,
So full of native sweets, that bless
Thy roof with inward happiness,
As neither form, nor to thy store
Winter takes aught, or spring adds more.
The cold and frozen air had sterved
Much poor, if not by thee preserved,
Whose prayers have made thy table blest
With plenty, far above the rest.
The season hardly did afford
Coarse cates unto thy neighbours’ board,
Yet thou hast dainties, as the sky
Had only been thy volary;
Or else the birds, fearing the snow
Might to another deluge grow,
The pheasant, partridge, and the lark
Flew to thy house, as to the Artk.
The willing ox of himself came
Home to the slaughter with the lamb,
And every beast did thither bring
Himself, to be an offering.
The scaly herd more pleasure took,
Bathed in thy dish than in the brook;
Water, earth, air, did all conspire
To pay their tributes to thy fire,
Whose cherishing flames themselves divide
Through every room, where they deride
The night and cold abroad; whilst they,
Like suns within, keep endless day.
Those cheerful beams send forth their light
To all that wander in the night,
And seem to beckon from aloof
The weary pilgrim to thy roof,
Where if, refresh’d, he will away,
He’s fairly welcome; or, if stay,
Far more; which he shall hearty find
Both from the master and the hind:
The stranger’s welcome each man there
Stamp’d on his cheerful brow doth wear.
Nor doth this welcome or his cheer
Grow less, ’cause he stays longer here:
There’s none observes, much less repines,
How often this man sups or dines.
Thou hast no porter at thy door
T’examine or keep back the poor;
Nor locks nor bolts: thy gates have bin
Made only to let strangers in;
Untaught to shut, they do not fear
To stand wide open all the year,
Careless who enters, for they know
Thou never didst deserve a foe:
And as for thieves, thy bounty’s such,
They cannot steal, thou giv’st so much.

(To Saxham, Complete, 36-8)


Sir,
Ere you pass this threshold, stay,
And give your creature leave to pay
Those pious rites, which unto you,
As to our household gods, are due.
…
Incense nor gold have we, …
…
The slaughter’d beast, whose flesh should feed
The hungry flames, we for pure need
Dress for your supper; and the gore
Which should be dash’d on every door,
We change into the lusty blood
Of youthful vines, of which a flood
Shall sprightly run through all your veins,
First to your health, then your fair train’s.
…
Such rarities, that come from far,
From poor men’s houses banish’d are:
…
We’ll have whate’er the season yields
Out of the neighbouring woods and fields;
…
And, having supp’d, we may perchance
Present you with a country dance.
…
And beg, besides, you’ld hither bring
Only the mercy of a king,
And not the greatness: since they have
A thousand faults must pardon crave,
But nothing that is fit to wait
Upon the glory of your state.

(To the King, At His Entrance into Saxham, By Master John Crofts, 40-1)


Must fever shake this goodly tree, and all
That ripen’d fruit form the fair branches fall,
Which princes have desired to taste? Must she,
Who hath preserved her spotless chastity
Form all solicitation, now at last
By agues and diseases be embraced?

(Upon the Sickness of E. S., 42)


That health may crown the seasons of this year,
And mirth dance round the circle; that no tear,
Unless of joy, may with its briny dew
Discolour on your cheek the rosy hue;
That no access of years presume to abate
Your beauties’ ever-flourishing estate.
Such cheap and vulgar wishes I could lay
As trivial off’rings at your feet this day,
But that it were apostacy in me
To send a prayer to any deity
But your divine self, who have power to give
Those blessings unto others, such as live
Like me, by the sole influence of your eyes,
Whose fair aspects govern our destinies.

[A wish by what means? She is the source of happiness.] (A New-Year’s Sacrifice, 44)


Then, think not that my heat can die, [poor prosody]
Till you burn as well as I.

(Song. To My Mistress, I Burning in Love, 46)


Now she burns as well as I,
Yet my heat can never die;
…
She burns, she cries, “Love’s fires are mild;
Fevers are God’s; he’s a child.”
Love! let her know the difference
’Twixt the heat of soul and sense:
Touch her with thy flames divine,
So shalt thou quench her fire, and mine.

(Song. To Her Again, She Burning in a Fever, 47)


Sickness, …
…
First it begins upon the womb to wait,
And doth the unborn child there uncreate; [sloppy]

(Upon the King’s Sickness, 48)


Let fools great Cupid’s yoke disdain,
Loving their own wild freedom better;
Whilst, proud of my triumphant chain,
I sit, and court my beauteous fetter.

[un-American] (Song. The Willing Prisoner to his Mistress, 51)


Hide not those panting balls of snow
With envious veils form my beholding;

(Song. The Willing Prisoner to His Mistress, 51)


Seek not to know my love, for she
Hath vow’d her constant faith to me;
Her mild aspects are mine, and thou
Shalt only find a stormy brow:

(Song. To One That Desired to Know My Mistress, 55)


No more, blind god! for see, me heart
Is made thy quiver, where remains
No void place for another dart;
And, alas! that conquest gains
Small praise, that only brings away
A tame and unresisting prey.
/
Behold a noble foe, all arm’d,
Defies thy weak artillery,
That hath thy bow and quiver charm’d,
A rebel beauty, conquering thee:
If thou dar’st equal combat try,
Wound her, for ’tis for her I die.

(Truce in Love Intreated, Complete, 57)


Wherefore do thy sad numbers flow, [poetry]

(Grief Engrossed, 63)


The giant, Honour, that keeps cowards out,
Is but a masque, and the servile rout
Of baser subjects only bend in vain
To the vast idol; whilst the noble train
Of valiant lovers daily sail between
The huge Colossus’ legs, and pass unseen
Unto the blissful shore. …

(A Rapture, 70)


There my enfranchised hand on every side
Shall o’er thy naked polish’d ivory side.
No curtain there, tough of transparent lawn,
Shall be before thy virgin-treasure drawn;

(A Rapture, 71)


Then, as the empty bee that lately bore
Into the common treasure all her store,
Flies ’bout the painted field with nimble wing,
Deflow’ring the fresh virgins of the spring,
So will I rifle all the sweets that dwell
In my delicious paradise, and swell
My bag with honey, drawn forth by the power
Of fervent kisses from each spicy flower.
…
Where I will all those ravish’d sweets distil
Through Love’s alembic, and with chemic skill
From the mix’d mass one soverign balm derive,
Then bring that great elixir to thy hive.

(A Rapture, 72)


My rudder with thy bold hand, like a tried
And skillful pilot, thou shalt steer, and guide
My bark into love’s channel, where it shall
Dance, as the bounding waves do rise or fall.

(A Rapture, 72-3)


And send up holy vapours to those powers
That bless our loves and crown our sportful hours,

(A Rapture, 73)


We seek no midnight arbour, no dark groves
To hide our kisses: there, the hated name
Of husband, wife, lust, modest, chaste or shame,
Are vain and empty words, whose very sound
Was never heart in the Elysian ground.
All things are lawful there, …

(A Rapture, 73)


…tell me why
This goblin Honour, which the world adores,
Should make men atheists, and not women whores?

(A Rapture, 75)


The Lady Mary Villiers lies
Under this stone; with weeping eyes
The parents that first gave her birth,
And their sad friends, laid her in earth.
If any of them, Reader, were
Known unto thee, shed a tear;
Or if thyself possess a gem
As dear to thee, as this to them,
Though a stranger to this place,
Bewail in theirs thine own hard case:
For thou, perhaps, at thy return
Mayst find thy darling in an urn.

(Epitaph on the Lady Mary Villiers, Complete 76)


…She was a cabinet
Where all the choicest stones of price were set:
…
The constant diamond, the wise chrysolite,
The devout sapphire, emerald apt to write
Records of memory, cheerful agate, grave
And serious onyx, topaz that doth save
The brain’s calm temper, witty amethyst,
…
One only pearl was wanting to her store,
Which in her Saviour’s book she found express’d:
To purchase that, she sold Death all the rest.

(Epitaph on the Lady S., Wife of Sir W. S., 78)


Answer. As streams which form their crystal spring
Do sweet and clear their waters bring,
Yet, mingling with the brackish main,
Nor taste nor colour they retain.

(Four Songs, By Way of Chorus to a Play, 84)


Who hath his flock of cackling geese compared
With thy tuned choir of swans? …

(To Ben Jonson, Upon the Occasion of His Ode of Defiance Annexed to His Play of the New Inn, 90)


Thou shalt endure a trial by thy peers;
Virgins of equal birth, of equal years,
Whose virtues held with thine an emulous strife,
Shall draw thy picture, and record thy life.

(Obsequies to the Lady Anne Hay, 95)





Knew how to brandish steel and scatter gold

(Upon the Countess of Anglesey, 98)


…the uncissor’d [long-haired] lecturer, form the flower
Of fading rhetoric, short-lived as his hour [to preach]
Dry as the sand that measures it, [hour glass]

(An Elegy Upon the Death of Dr. Donne, Dean of Paul’s, 100)


The Muses’ garden, with pedantic weeds
O’erspread, was purged by thee; …

(An Elegy Upon the Death of Dr. Donne, Dean of Paul’s, 101)


…to the awe of thy imperious wit
Our troublesome language bends, …

(An Elegy Upon the Death of Dr. Donne, Dean of Paul’s, 101)


And so, whilst I cast on thy funeral pile
Thy crown of bays, oh let it crack awhile,
And spit disdain, till the devouring flashes
Suck all the moisture up, then turn to ashes.

(An Elegy Upon the Death of Dr. Donne, Dean of Paul’s, 103)


Here lies a king that rules, as he thought fit,
The universal monarchy of wit;

(An Elegy Upon the Death of Dr. Donne, Dean of Paul’s, 103)


Believe me, friend, if their prevailing powers
Gain them a calm security like ours,
They’ll hang their arms upon the olive bough,
And dance and reveal then, as we do now.
(In Answer of an Elegialcal Letter, Upon the Death of the King of Sweden form Aurelian Townsend, Inviting Me to Write on That Subject, 107)


Sweetly breathing vernal air,
That with kind warmth dost repair
Winter’s ruins; …
…
Thou, if stormy Boreas throws
Down whole forests when he blwos,
With a pregnant flowery birth
Canst refresh the teeming earth;

(Upon Master W. Montague, His Return from Travel, 108)


For till to-morrow we’ll prorogue this storm;
Which shall confound, with its loud whistling noise,
Her pleasing shrieks, and fan thy panting joys.

(Upon the Marriage of T. K. and C. C. : The Morning Stormy, 112)


Whose perfumes through the ambient air diffuse
Such native aromatics, as we use
No foreign gums, nor essence fetch’d from far,
No volatile spirits, nor compounds that are

[organic motto] (To My Friend G. N., From Wrest, 120)


Where, at large tables fill’d with wholesome meats,
The servant, tenant, and kind neighbour eats.
Some of that rank, spun of a finer thread,
Are with the women, steward, and chaplain, fed
With daintier cates; others of better note,
Whom wealth, parts, office, or the herald’s coat
Have sever’d form the common, freely sit
At the lord’s table, whose spread sides admit
A large access of friends, to fill those seats
Of his capacious circle, fill’d with meats
Of choicest relish, till his oaken back
Under the load of piled up dishes crack.

(To My Friend G. N., From Wrest, 121)


Waters…
Disport and wander freely where they please,

(To My Friend G. N., From Wrest, 122)


Look back, old Janus, …
…
Turn o’er the annals past, and where
Happy auspicious days appear,
Mark’d with the whiter stone, that cast
On the dark brow of th’ ages past
A dazzling lustre, …

(A New Year’s Gift, 124)


Thou great commandress, that dost move
Thy sceptre o’er the crown of Love,

(To the Queen, 125)


Dearest, thy tresses are not threads of gold,
Thy eyes of diamonds, nor do I hold
Thy lips for rubies, …

(The Comparison, 136)


I do not love thee for that belly,
Sleek as satin, soft as jelly;

(The Complement, 138)


Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose;
For in your beauty’s orient deep
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep.

(A Song, 141)


Give me a wench about thirteen,
Already voted to the queen
Of lust and lovers; …
…
Whose every part doth re-invite
The old decayed appetite;
And in whose sweet embraces I
May melt my self to lust, and die.
This is true bliss, and I confess
There is no other happiness.

[note change in meter in italics. Pedophilia as well.] (A Second Rapture, 142)


O ’tis a life to be so dead!

(A Song, 144)


Sit thee down,
And we will make the gods confess
Mortals enjoy some happiness.

(Love’s Courtship, 149)


Though peace do petty states maintain,
Here war alone makes beauty reign.

(On Mistress N., To the Green Sickness, 156)


Had he not eaten, she perhaps had been
Unpunish’d: his consent made her’s a sin.

[patronizing, funny] (A Married Woman, 160)


Whose priest sung sweetest lays, thou didst appear,
A glorious mystery, so dark, so clear,
As Nature did intend
All should confess, but none might comprehend?

[Romantic] (A Divine Love, 161)


…scattering such loose fires

(A Divine Love, 161)


The good things that I meet, I think streams be,
From you, the fountain; …

(To Celia, Upon Love’s Ubiquity, 169)


I am the dial’s hand, still walking round,
You are the compass: …

(To Celia, Upon Love’s Ubiquity, 169)


And I myself would choose to know it,
First by thy care and cunning not to show it.

(Methodus Amandi, A Dialogue, 175)


Her eye so rich, so pure a grey,
Every beam creates a day:
And, if she but sleep (not when
The sun sets), ’tis night again.

(The Hue and Cry, 180)