Michael Drayton Poems

How many paltry foolish painted things,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding-sheet!
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Bright star of beauty, on whose eyelids sit
A thousand nymph-like and enamour'd Graces,
The Goddesses of Memory and Wit,
Which there in order take their several places;
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Calling to mind since first my love begun,
Th' incertain times oft varying in their course,
How things still unexpectedly have run,
As t' please the fates by their resistless force:
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As Love and I, late harbor'd in one inn,
With proverbs thus each other entertain:
"In Love there is no lack," thus I begin;
"Fair words make fools," replieth he again;
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Fair stood the wind for France,
When we our sails advance;
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
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To Humor

You cannot love, my pretty heart, and why?
There was a time you told me that you would;
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Yet read at last the story of my woe,
The dreary abstracts of my endless cares,
With my life's sorrow interlined so,
Smok'd with my sighs and blotted with my tears,
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Love's Lunacy

Why do I speak of joy, or write of love,
When my heart is the very den of horror,
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Truce, gentle Love, a parley now I crave;
Methinks 'tis long since first these wars begun;
Nor thou nor I the better yet can have;
Bad is the match where neither party won.
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What? Dost thou mean to cheat me of my heart?
To take all mine and give me none again?
Or have thine eyes such magic or that art
That what they get they ever do retain?
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