Page:Works of Sir John Suckling.djvu/74

54 Or do you think they more than once can die, Whom you deny; Who tell you of a thousand deaths a day, Like the old poets feign And tell the pain They met, but in the common way?

Or do you think 't too soon to yield, And quit the field? Nor is that right; they yield that first entreat: Once one may crave for love, But more would prove This heart too little, that too great.

O that I were all soul, that I might prove For you as fit a love As you are for an angel; for, I know, None but pure spirits are fit loves for you.

You are all ethereal; there's in you no dross, Nor any part that's gross. Your coarsest part is like a curious lawn, The vestal relics for a covering drawn.

Your other parts, part of the purest fire That e'er Heaven did inspire, Makes every thought that is refined by it, A quintessence of goodness and of wit.

Thus have your raptures reach'd to that degree In Love's philosophy, That you can figure to yourself a fire Void of all heat, a love without desire.

Nor in Divinity do you go less: You think, and you profess, That souls may have a plenitude of joy, Although their bodies meet not to employ.

But I must needs confess, I do not find The motions of my mind So purified as yet, but at the best My body claims in them an interest.

I hold that perfect joy makes all our parts As joyful as our hearts. Our senses tell us, if we please not them, Our love is but a dotage or a dream.