Francis Beaumont Poems

MORTALITY, behold and fear!
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones:
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Lay a garland on my hearse,
Of the dismal yew,
Maidens, willow branches bear,
Say I died true.
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May I find a woman fair,
And her mind as clear as air,
If her beauty go alone,
'Tis to me as if't were none.
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Never more will I protest,
To love a woman but in jest:
For as they cannot be true,
So, to give each man his due,
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I sing the fortune of a luckless pair,
Whose spotless souls now in one body be;
For beauty still is Prodromus to care,
Crost by the sad stars of nativity:
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Fondly, too curious Nature, to adorn
Aurora with the blushes of the morn:
Why do her rosy lips breath gums and spice;
Unto the East, and sweet to Paradise?
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The sun, which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends (because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent), is
Here our best hay-maker (forgive me this,
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Now fie on foolish love, it not befits
Or man or woman know it.
Love was not meant for people in their wits,
And they that fondly show it
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IT is a statute in deepe wisdomes lore,
That for his lines none should a patro[n] chuse
By wealth or pouerty, by lesse or more,
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It is a statute in deep wisdom's lore,
That for his lines none should a patron chuse
By wealth and poverty, by less or more,
But who the same is able to peruse:
...