Why I Write Not To Love

Some act of Love's bound to reherse,
I thought to bind him, in my verse:
Which when he felt, Away (quoth he)
Can Poets hope to fetter me?
It is enough, they once did get
Mars, and my Mother, in their net:
I weare not these my wings in vaine.
With which he fled me: and againe,
Into my rimes could ne're be got
By any art. Then wonder not,
That since, my numbers are so cold,
When Love is fled, and I grow old.

Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson was an English playwright and poet, best known for his satirical plays and lyric poetry. Born on June 11, 1572, Jonson's works, including 'Volpone' and 'The Alchemist,' were critical of social norms and human follies. A contemporary and rival of Shakespeare, he was a significant figure in English Renaissance literature. Jonson also contributed to the development of English poetry through his masques and epigrams. He died on August 6, 1637.

Ben Jonson

Epitaph

Ben Jonson, Simple Poetry

Preconception

Ben Jonson, Simple Poetry

In The Ember Days Of My Last Free Summer

Ben Jonson, Simple Poetry

A Farewell To The World

Ben Jonson, Simple Poetry

English

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Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Doubters And The Lovers.

Ye love, and sonnets write! Fate's strange behest!

The heart, its hidden meaning to declare,

Must seek for rhymes, uniting pair with pair:
Learn, children, that the will is weak, at best.

Scarcely with freedom the o'erflowing breast

As yet can speak, and well may it beware;

Tempestuous passions sweep each chord that's there,
Then once more sink to night and gentle rest.

Why vex yourselves and us, the heavy stone

Up the steep path but step by step to roll?

It falls again, and ye ne'er cease to strive.

THE LOVERS.

But we are on the proper road alone!

If gladly is to thaw the frozen soul,

The fire of love must aye be kept alive.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Stanzas.[591]

1.

Could Love for ever
Run like a river,
And Time's endeavour
Be tried in vain -
No other pleasure
With this could measure;
And like a treasure^[ik]
We'd hug the chain.
But since our sighing
Ends not in dying,
And, formed for flying,
Love plumes his wing;
Then for this reason
Let's love a season;
But let that season be only Spring.


2.

When lovers parted
Feel broken-hearted,
And, all hopes thwarted,
Expect to die;
A few years older,
Ah! how much colder
They might behold her
For whom they sigh!
When linked together,
In every weather,^[il]
They pluck Love's feather
From out his wing -
He'll stay for ever,^[im]
But sadly shiver
Without h...

George Gordon Byron

To The World

A farewell for a Gentlewoman, vertuous and noble

False world, good-night, since thou hast brought
That houre upon my morne of age,
Hence-forth I quit thee from my thought,
My part is ended on thy stage.
Doe not once hope, that thou canst tempt
A spirit so resolv'd to tread
Upon thy throat, and live exempt
From all the nets that thou canst spread.
I know thy formes are studied arts,
Thy subtill wayes, be narrow straits;
Thy curtesie but sudden starts,
And what thou call'st thy gifts are baits.
I know too, though thou strut, and paint,
Yet art thou both shrunke up, and old;
That onely fooles make thee a saint,
And all thy good is to be sold.
I know thou whole art but a shop
Of toyes, and trifles, traps, and snares,
To take the weake, or make...

Ben Jonson

An Elegy

Though beauty be the mark of praise,
And yours of whom I sing be such
As not the world can praise too much,
Yet tis your Virtue now I raise.

A virtue, like allay so gone
Throughout your form as, though that move
And draw and conquer all mens love,
This subjects you to love of one.

Wherein you triumph yet because
Tis of your flesh, and that you use
The noblest freedom, not to choose
Against or faith or honours laws.

But who should less expect from you?
In whom alone Love lives again:
By whom he is restored to men,
And kept and bred and brought up true.

His falling temples you have reard,
The witherd garlands taen away;
His altars kept from that decay
That envy wishd, and nature feard:

And on them burn s...

Ben Jonson

On My First Son

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.

Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon scaped worlds and fleshs rage,
And if no other misery, yet age!

Rest in soft peace, and asked, say, Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such
As what he loves may never like too much.

Ben Jonson

Young Love

I

I cannot heed the words they say,
The lights grow far away and dim,
Amid the laughing men and maids
My eyes unbidden seek for him.

I hope that when he smiles at me
He does not guess my joy and pain,
For if he did, he is too kind
To ever look my way again.

II

I have a secret in my heart
No ears have ever heard,
And still it sings there day by day
Most like a caged bird.

And when it beats against the bars,
I do not set it free,
For I am happier to know
It only sings for me.

III

I wrote his name along the beach,
I love the letters so.
Far up it seemed and out of reach,
For still the tide was low.

But oh, the sea came creeping up,
And washed the name away,
And on the san...

Sara Teasdale