Page:Hesperides Vol 1.djvu/132

 So kings and queens meet, when desire convinces All thoughts but such as aim at getting princes, As I meet thee. Soul of my life and fame! Eternal lamp of love! whose radiant flame Out-glares the heaven's Osiris,[H] and thy gleams Out-shine the splendour of his mid-day beams. Welcome, O welcome, my illustrious spouse; Welcome as are the ends unto my vows; Aye! far more welcome than the happy soil The sea-scourged merchant, after all his toil, Salutes with tears of joy, when fires betray The smoky chimneys of his Ithaca. Where hast thou been so long from my embraces, Poor pitied exile? Tell me, did thy graces Fly discontented hence, and for a time Did rather choose to bless another clime? Or went'st thou to this end, the more to move me, By thy short absence, to desire and love thee? Why frowns my sweet? Why won't my saint confer Favours on me, her fierce idolater? Why are those looks, those looks the which have been Time-past so fragrant, sickly now drawn in Like a dull twilight? Tell me, and the fault I'll expiate with sulphur, hair and salt; And, with the crystal humour of the spring, Purge hence the guilt and kill this quarrelling.