ELEGIES.
107
Likeness glues love; and if that thou so do,
To make us like and love, must I change too?
More than thy hate, I hate it; rather let me
Allow her change, then change as oft as she,
And so not teach, but force my opinion,
To love not any one, nor every one.
To live in one land is captivity,
30To run all countries a wild roguery.
Waters stink soon, if in one place they bide,
And in the vast sea are more putrified;
But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this
Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,
Then are they purest; change is the nursery
Of music, joy, life, and eternity.
To make us like and love, must I change too?
More than thy hate, I hate it; rather let me
Allow her change, then change as oft as she,
And so not teach, but force my opinion,
To love not any one, nor every one.
To live in one land is captivity,
30To run all countries a wild roguery.
Waters stink soon, if in one place they bide,
And in the vast sea are more putrified;
But when they kiss one bank, and leaving this
Never look back, but the next bank do kiss,
Then are they purest; change is the nursery
Of music, joy, life, and eternity.
ELEGY IV.
THE PERFUME.
Once, and but once, found in thy company,
All thy supposed escapes are laid on me;
And as a thief at bar is question’d there
By all the men that have been robb’d that year,
So am I—by this traitorous means surprized—
By thy hydroptic father catechized.
Though he had wont to search with glazèd eyes,
As though he came to kill a cockatrice;
All thy supposed escapes are laid on me;
And as a thief at bar is question’d there
By all the men that have been robb’d that year,
So am I—by this traitorous means surprized—
By thy hydroptic father catechized.
Though he had wont to search with glazèd eyes,
As though he came to kill a cockatrice;
l. 31. 1669, they abide
l. 32. 1669, worse purified
l. 2. 1669, scapes
