Disdain Returned

HE that loves a rosy cheek,

Or a coral lip admires,

Or from starlike eyes doth seek

Fuel to maintain his fires;

As old Time makes these decay,

So his flames must waste away.

But a smooth and steadfast mind,

Gentle thoughts and calm desires,

Hearts with equal love combined,

Kindle never-dying fires.

Where these are not, I despise

Lovely cheeks, or lips, or eyes.

No tears, Celia, now shall win

My resolved heart to return;

I have searched thy soul within,

And find naught but pride and scorn;

I have learned thy arts, and now

Can disdain as much as thou.

Some power, in my revenge convey

That love to her I cast away.

Thomas Carew

Song: Mediocrity in Love Rejected

GIVE me more love, or more disdain;

The torrid or the frozen zone

Bring equal ease unto my pain,

The temperate affords me none;

Either extreme, of love or hate,

Is sweeter than a calm estate.

Give me a storm; if it be love,

Like Danae in that golden shower,

I swim in pleasure; if it prove

Disdain, that torrent will devour

My vulture hopes; and he's possessed

Of heaven, that's but from hell released.

Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;

Give me more love, or more disdain.

Thomas Carew

A Song

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.

Ask me no more whither doth stray

The golden atoms of the day;

For in pure love heaven did prepare

Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste

The nightingale, when May is past;

For in your sweet, dividing throat

She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars light,

That downwards fall in dead of night;

For in your eyes they sit, and there

Fixed become, as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west

The phoenix builds her spicy nest;

For unto you at last she flies,

And in your fragrant bosom dies.

Thomas Carew

Song: Persuasions to Enjoy

IF the quick spirits in your eye

Now languish, and anon must die;

If every sweet, and every grace

Must fly from that forsaken face;

Then, Celia, let us reap our joys,

Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys.

Or if that golden fleece must grow

Forever, free from aged snow;

If those bright suns must know no shade,

Nor your fresh beauties ever fade;

Then fear not, Celia, to bestow

What, still being gathered, still must grow.

Thus, either Time his sickle brings

In vain, or else in vain his wings.

Thomas Carew

The Spring

NOW that the winter's gone, the earth hath lost

Her snow-white robes, and now no more the frost

Candies the grass, or casts an icy cream

Upon the silver lake or crystal stream;

But the warm sun thaws the benumbed earth,

And makes it tender; gives a sacred birth

To the dead swallow; wakes in hollow tree

The drowsy cuckoo and the humble-bee.

Now do a choir of chirping minstrels bring

In triumph to the world the youthful spring.

The valleys, hills, and woods in rich array

Welcome the coming of the long'd-for May.

Now all things smile; only my love doth lour*;          [frown]

Nor hath the scalding noonday sun the power

To melt that marble ice, which still doth hold

Her heart congeal'd, and makes her pity cold.

The ox, which lately did for shelter fly

Into the stall, doth now securely lie

In open fields; and love no more is made

By the fireside, but in the cooler shade

Amyntas now doth with his Chloris sleep

Under a sycamore, and all things keep

Time with the season; only she doth carry

June in her eyes, in her heart January.

Thomas Carew

A Divine Mistress

[Ed. Note: Carew bases this poem on the commonly-held distinction between things divinely created, which were perfect, and those created by Nature, which were not and upon which Man could improve. --Nelson]

IN Nature's pieces still I see

Some error, that might mended be;

Something my wish could still remove,

Alter or add; but my fair love

Was fram'd by hands far more divine

For she hath ev'ry beauteous line;

Yet I had been far happier,

Had Nature, that made me, made her.

Then likeness might, that love creates,

Have made her love what now she hates;

Yet, I confess, I cannot spare

From her just shape the smallest hair;

Nor need I beg from all the store

Pf heaven for her one beauty more.

She hath too much divinity for me;

Ye gods, teach her some more humanity.

Thomas Carew

Song: Eternity of Love Protested

HOW ill doth he deserve a lover's name,

     Whose pale weak flame

     Cannot retain

His heat, in spite of absence or disdain;

But doth at once, like paper set on fire,

     Burn and expire;

True love can never change his seat,

Nor did her ever love, that could retreat.

That noble flame which my breast keeps alive

     Shall still survive

     When my soul's fled;

Nor shall my love die when my body's dead,

That shall wait on me to the lower shade,

     And never fade;

My very ashes in their urn

Shall, like a hallow'd lamp, forever burn.

Thomas Carew

To Saxham

[Ed. Note: Saxham was the country estate of Sir John Crofts with whose family Carew had a close relationship; the poem is patterned on Ben Jonson's "To Penshurst." --Nelson]

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, thou within thy gate

Art of thyself so delicate,

So full of native sweets, that bless

Thy roof with inward happiness,

As neither from nor to thy store

Winter takes aught, or spring adds more.

The cold and frozen air had starv'd*          [killed]

Much poor, if not by thee preserv'd,

Whose prayers have made thy table blest

With plenty, far above the rest.

The season hardly did afford

Coarse cates* unto thy neighbors' board,          [foods]

Yet thou hadst dainties, as the sky

Had only been thy volary*;          [aviary]

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 Ark.

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,

Bath'd 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 aboard; 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*          [a distance]

The weary pilgrim to thy roof,

Where if, refresh'd, he will away,

He's faily welcome; or if stay,

Far more; which he shall hearty find

Both from the master and the hind*.          [servant]

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*,          [criticizes]

How often this man sups or dines.

Thou hast no porter at the door

T'examine or keep back the poor;

Nor locks nor bolts: thy gates have been

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.

Thomas Carew

Epitaph for Maria Wentworth

[Ed. Note: Maria Wentworth was the granddaughter of Sir John Crofts; this poem, except for the final stanza, is inscribed on her tomb. --Nelson]

AND here the precious dust is laid;

Whose purely-temper'd clay was made

So fine that it the guest betray'd.

Else the soul grew so fast within,

It broke the outward shell of sin,

And so was hatch'd a cherubin.

In height, it soar'd to God above;

In depth, it did to knowledge move,

And spread in breadth to general love.

Before, a pious duty shin'd

To parents, courtesy behind;

On either side an equal mind.

Good to the poor, to kindred dear,

To servants kind, to friendship clear,

To nothing but herself severe.

So, though a virgin, yet a bride

To ev'ry grace, she justified

A chaste polygamy, and died.

Learn from hence, reader, what small trust

We owe this world, where virtue must,

Frail as our flesh, crumble to dust.

Thomas Carew

An Elegy upon the Death of Dr. Donne, Dean of Paul's

[Ed. Note: In the poem's concluding quatrain, Carew refers to the "two flamens" (priests) who are buried; he is stating that Donne was, as a poet, a priest of Apollo and, as a preacher, a priest of God. This poem appeared in Poems by J. D., published in 1633, two years after Donne's death. --Nelson]

CAN we not force from widow'd poetry,

Now thou art dead, great Donne, one elegy

To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust,

Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd* prose, thy dust*          [dull]

Such as the unscissor'd* churchman, from the flower          [unshorn]

Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour,

Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay

Upon thy ashes on the funeral day?

Have we no voice, no tune? Didst thou dispense

Through all our language both the words and sense?

'Tis a sad truth. The pulpit may her plain

And sober Christian precepts still retain;

Doctrines it may, and wholesome uses, frame,

Grave homilies and lectures, but the flame

Of thy brave soul, that shot such heat and light

As burnt our earth, and made our darkness bright,

Committed holy rapes upon our will,

Did through the eye the melting heart distill,

And the deep knowledge of dark* truths so teach,          [hidden]

As sense might judge what fancy could not reach,

Must be desir'd forever. So the fire

That fills with spirit and heat the Delphic choir*,          [Apollo's oracle]

Which, kindled first by thy Promethean breath,

Glow'd here awhile, lies quench'd now in thy death.

The Muses' garden, with pedantic weed

O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds

Of servile imitation thrown away,

And fresh invention plant'd. Thou didst pay

The debts of our penurious bankrupt age;

Licentious thefts, that make poetic rage

A mimic fury, when our souls must be

Possess'd, or with Anacreon's ecstacy,

Or Pindar's, not their own; the subtle cheat

Of sly exchanges, and the juggling feat

Of two-edg'd words, or whatsoever wrong

By ours was done the Greek, or Latin tongue,

Thou hast redeem'd, and open'd us a mine

Of rich and pregnant fancy; drawn a line

Of masculine expression, which had good

Old Orpheus see, or all the ancient brood

Our superstitious fools admire, and hold

Their lead more precious than thy burnish'd gold,

Thou hadst been their exchequer, and no more

They each in other's dust had rak'd for ore.

Thou shalt yield no precedence, but of time,

And the blind fate of language, whose tun'd chime

More charms the outward sense; yet thou mayst claim

From so great disadvantage greater fame,

Since to the awe of thy imperious wit

Our stubborn language bends, made only fit

With her tough thick-ribb'd hoops to gird about

Thy giant fancy, which had prov'd too stout

For their soft melting phrases. As in time

They had the start, so did they cull the prime

Buds of invention many a hundred year,

And left the rifl'd fields, besides the fear

To touch their harvest; yet from those bare lands

Of what is purely thine, thy only hands,

(And that thy smallest work) have gleaned more

Than all those times and tongues could reap before.

  But thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be

Too hard for libertines in poetry.

They will repeal the goodly exil'd train

Of gods and goddesses, which in thy just reign

Were banish'd nobler poems; now, with these,

The silenc'd tales o'th' Metamorphoses

Shall stuff their lines, and swell the windy page,

Till verse, refin'd by thee, in this last age

Turn ballad-rhyme*, or those old idols be          [crude poetry]

Ador'd again with new apostasy.

  O pardon me, that break with untun'd verse

The reverend silence that attends thy hearse,

Whose aweful solemn murmurs were to thee,

More than these faint lines, a loud elegy,

That did proclaim in a dumb eloquence

The death of all the arts, whose influence

Grown feeble, in these panting numbers lies

Gasping short-wind'd accents, and so dies.

So doth the swiftly turning wheel not stand

In th'instant we withdraw the moving hand,

But some small time maintain a faint weak course,

By virtue of the first impulsive force;

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.

  I will not draw the envy to engross*       &nbs;  [enlarge upon]

All thy perfections, or weep all our loss;

Those were too numerous for an elegy,

And this too great to be express'd by me.

Though ev'ry pen should share a distinct part,

Yet art thou theme enough to 'tire* all art;          [attire]

Let others carve the rest; it shall suffice

I on thy tomb this epitaph incise:

Here lies a king, that rul'd as he thought fit

The universal monarchy of wit;

Here lie two falmens, and both those the best:

Apollo's first, at last the true God's priest.

Thomas Carew