3 If our loose breath so much can do,
  What may the same in forms of love,
  Of purest love, and music too,
  When Flavia it aspires to move? 
  When that, which lifeless buds persuades
  To wax more soft, her youth invades?

ON THE DISCOVERY OF A LADY’S PAINTING.

1 Pygmalion’s fate reversed is mine;[1]
  His marble love took flesh and blood;
  All that I worshipp’d as divine,
  That beauty! now ’tis understood,
  Appears to have no more of life
  Than that whereof he framed his wife.

2 As women yet, who apprehend
  Some sudden cause of causeless fear,
  Although that seeming cause take end,
  And they behold no danger near,
  A shaking through their limbs they find,
  Like leaves saluted by the wind: 

3 So though the beauty do appear
  No beauty, which amazed me so;
  Yet from my breast I cannot tear
  The passion which from thence did grow;
  Nor yet out of my fancy raze
  The print of that supposed face.

4 A real beauty, though too near,
  The fond Narcissus did admire: 
  I dote on that which is nowhere;
  The sign of beauty feeds my fire. 
  No mortal flame was e’er so cruel
  As this, which thus survives the fuel!

[1] ‘Mine’:  Ovid, Met. x.

OF LOVING AT FIRST SIGHT.

1 Not caring to observe the wind,
  Or the new sea explore,
  Snatch’d from myself, how far behind
  Already I behold the shore!

2 May not a thousand dangers sleep
  In the smooth bosom of this deep? 
  No; ’tis so reckless and so clear,
  That the rich bottom does appear
  Paved all with precious things; not torn
  From shipwreck’d vessels, but there born.

3 Sweetness, truth, and every grace
  Which time and use are wont to teach,
  The eye may in a moment reach,
  And read distinctly in her face.

4 Some other nymphs, with colours faint,
  And pencil slow, may Cupid paint,
  And a weak heart in time destroy;
  She has a stamp, and prints the boy: 
  Can, with a single look, inflame
  The coldest breast, the rudest tame.

THE SELF-BANISHED.

1 It is not that I love you less,
  Than when before your feet I lay;
  But to prevent the sad increase
  Of hopeless love, I keep away.

2 In vain, alas! for everything
  Which I have known belong to you,
  Your form does to my fancy bring,
  And makes my old wounds bleed anew.

3 Who in the spring, from the new sun,
  Already has a fever got,
  Too late begins those shafts to shun,
  Which Phoebus through his veins has shot;

4 Too late he would the pain assuage,
  And to thick shadows does retire;
  About with him he bears the rage,
  And in his tainted blood the fire.