The Bait

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
WIth silken lines, and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run
Warm'd by thine eyes, more than the Sun.
And there the enamor'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, be loath,
By Sun, or Moon, thou darknest both,
And if my self have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs, with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net:

Let coarse bold hands, from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks out-wrest,
Or curious traitors, sleevesilk flies
Betwitch poor fishes' wandering eyes.

For thee, thou needst no such deceit,
For thou thy self art thine own bait;
That fish, that is not catch'd thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.

Air And Angels

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angels affect us oft, and worshipped be;
     Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
     But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
     More subtle than the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too;
     And therefore what thou wert, and who,
        I bid love ask, and now
That it assume thy body I allow,
And fix itself to thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught
     Every thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
     For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere.
     Then as an angel, face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
     So thy love may be my love's sphere.
        Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angel's purity,
'Twixt women's love and men's will ever be.

Love's Infiniteness

If yet I have not all thy love,
Dear, I shall never have it all,
I cannot breathe one other sigh, to move,
Nor can entreat one other tear to fall,
And all my treasure, which should purchase thee,
Sighs, tears, and oaths, and letters I have spent.
Yet no more can be due to me,
Than at the bargain made was meant;
If then thy gift of love were partial,
That some to me, some should to others fall,
     Dear, I shall never have thee all.

Or if then thou gavest me all,
All was but all, which thou hadst then;
But if in thy heart, since, there be or shall
New love created be, by other men,
Which have their stocks entire, and can in tears,
In sighs, in oaths, and letters outbid me,
This new love may beget new fears,
For, this love was not vowed by thee.
And yet it was, thy gift being general;
The ground, thy heart, is mine, whatever shall
     Grow there, dear, I should have it all.

Yet I would not have all yet;
He that hath all can have no more,
And since my love doth every day admit
New growth, thou shouldst have new rewards in store;
Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it:
Love's riddles are, that though thy heart depart,
It stays at home, and thou with losing savest it:
But we will have a way more liberal,
Than changing hearts, to join them, so we shall
     Be one, and one another's all.