We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,

And we in us find th' eagle and the dove. The phoenix riddle hath more wit By us; we two being one, are it;

So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. 25
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; 30
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,

We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns all shall approve 35
Us canonized for love;

And thus invoke us, 'You, whom reverend love

Made one another's hermitage;

You, to whom love was peace, that now

is rage;

Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove

Into the glasses of your eyes;

40

So made such mirrors, and such spies,

15

But every modern god will not extend
His vast prerogative as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the god of love.
O! were we wakened by this tyranny
To ungod this child again, it could not be
I should love her who loves not me. 21

Rebel and atheist too, why murmur I,

As though I felt the worst that love could do?

Love may make me leave loving, or might try

A deeper plague, to make her love me too;

25

As prisoners then are manacled, when they're condemned to die.

Whate'er she meant by 't, bury it with me,
For since I am

Love's martyr, it might breed idolatry
If into other hands these reliques came.
As 't was humility

T'afford to it all that a soul can do,

So 't is some bravery

20

That, since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.

THE COMPUTATION

For my first twenty years, since yesterday,
I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away;
For forty more I fed on favors past,
And forty on hopes, that thou wouldst they
might last;

Tears drowned one hundred, and sighs blew out two;

5

A thousand I did neither think nor do.
Or not divide, all being one thought of you;
Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life; but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts
die?

FORGET

IC

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.