hourly sing,
     And as he goes about the ring,
       We will not miss
     To tell each point he nameth with a kiss. 
       Then come on shore,
     Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.

     AN EPISTLE ON PARTING

     From ‘Epistles’

     Dear soul, the time is come, and we must part;
     Yet, ere I go, in these lines read my heart: 
     A heart so just, so loving, and so true,
     So full of sorrow and so full of you,
     That all I speak or write or pray or mean,—­
     And, which is all I can, all that I dream,—­
     Is not without a sigh, a thought of you,
     And as your beauties are, so are they true. 
     Seven summers now are fully spent and gone,
     Since first I loved, loved you, and you alone;
     And should mine eyes as many hundreds see,
     Yet none but you should claim a right in me;
     A right so placed that time shall never hear
     Of one so vowed, or any loved so dear. 
     When I am gone, if ever prayers moved you,
     Relate to none that I so well have loved you: 
     For all that know your beauty and desert,
     Would swear he never loved that knew to part. 
     Why part we then?  That spring, which but this day
     Met some sweet river, in his bed can play,
     And with a dimpled cheek smile at their bliss,
     Who never know what separation is. 
     The amorous vine with wanton interlaces
     Clips still the rough elm in her kind embraces: 
     Doves with their doves sit billing in the groves,
     And woo the lesser birds to sing their loves: 
     Whilst hapless we in griefful absence sit,
     Yet dare not ask a hand to lessen it.

     SONNETS TO CAELIA

     Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry,
       You took my hand to try if you could guess,
     By lines therein, if any wight there be
       Ordained to make me know some happiness: 
     I wished that those characters could explain,
       Whom I will never wrong with hope to win;
     Or that by them a copy might be ta’en,
       By you alone what thoughts I have within. 
     But since the hand of nature did not set
       (As providently loath to have it known)
     The means to find that hidden alphabet,
       Mine eyes shall be the interpreters alone: 
     By them conceive my thoughts, and tell me, fair,
      If now you see her that doth love me, there.

     Were’t not for you, here should my pen have rest,
       And take a long leave of sweet poesy;
     Britannia’s swains, and rivers far by west,
       Should hear no more my oaten melody. 
     Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile
       Unperfect lie, and make no further known
     The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle,
       Till I have left some record of mine own. 
     You are the subject