XI

    You’re not alone when you are still alone;
    O God! from you that I could private be! 
    Since you one were, I never since was one;
    Since you in me, myself since out of me. 
      Transported from myself into your being,
    Though either distant, present yet to either;
    Senseless with too much joy, each other seeing;
    And only absent when we are together. 
      Give me my self, and take your self again! 
    Devise some means but how I may forsake you! 
    So much is mine that doth with you remain,
    That taking what is mine, with me I take you. 
      You do bewitch me!  O that I could fly
      From my self you, or from your own self I!

TO THE SOUL

    XII

That learned Father which so firmly proves The soul of man immortal and divine, And doth the several offices define Anima. Gives her that name, as she the body moves. Amor. Then is she love, embracing charity. Animus. Moving a will in us, it is the mind; Mens. Retaining knowledge, still the same in kind. Memoria. As intellectual, it is memory. Ratio. In judging, reason only is her name. Sensus. In speedy apprehension, it is sense. Conscientia. In right and wrong they call her conscience; Spiritus. The spirit, when it to God-ward doth inflame:  These of the soul the several functions be, Which my heart lightened by thy love doth see.

TO THE SHADOW

    XIII

    Letters and lines we see are soon defaced
      Metals do waste and fret with canker’s rust,
      The diamond shall once consume to dust,
    And freshest colours with foul stains disgraced;
    Paper and ink can paint but naked words,
      To write with blood of force offends the sight;
      And if with tears, I find them all too light,
    And sighs and signs a silly hope affords. 
    O sweetest shadow, how thou serv’st my turn! 
      Which still shalt be as long as there is sun,
      Nor whilst the world is never shall be done;
    Whilst moon shall shine or any fire shall burn,
      That everything whence shadow doth proceed,
      May in his shadow my love’s story read.

    XIV

    If he, from heaven that filched that living fire,
      Condemned by Jove to endless torment be,
      I greatly marvel how you still go free
    That far beyond Prometheus did aspire. 
    The fire he stole, although of heavenly kind,
      Which from above he craftily did take,
      Of lifeless clods us living men to make
    He did bestow in temper of the mind. 
    But you broke into heaven’s immortal store,
      Where virtue, honour, wit, and beauty lay;
      Which taking thence, you have escaped away,
    Yet stand as free as e’er you did before. 
      Yet old Prometheus punished for his rape;
      Thus poor thieves suffer when the greater ’scape.