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it all that a soul can do,
     So ‘tis some bravery,
That since you would have none of me, I bury some of you.

THE BLOSSOM.
        LITTLE think’st thou, poor flower,
    Whom I’ve watch’d six or seven days,
And seen thy birth, and seen what every hour
Gave to thy growth, thee to this height to raise,
And now dost laugh and triumph on this bough,
    Little think’st thou,
That it will freeze anon, and that I shall
To-morrow find thee fallen, or not at all.
        Little think’st thou, poor heart,
    That labourest yet to nestle thee,
And think’st by hovering here to get a part
In a forbidden or forbidding tree,
And hopest her stiffness by long siege to bow,
    Little think’st thou
That thou to-morrow, ere the sun doth wake,
Must with the sun and me a journey take.
        But thou, which lovest to be
    Subtle to plague thyself, wilt say,
Alas! if you must go, what’s that to me?
Here lies my business, and here I will stay
You go to friends, whose love and means present
    Various content
To your eyes, ears, and taste, and every part;
If then your body go, what need your heart?
        Well then, stay here; but know,
    When thou hast stay’d and done thy most,
A naked thinking heart, that makes no show,
Is to a woman but a kind of ghost.
How shall she know my heart; or having none,
    Know thee for one?
Practice may make her know some other part;
But take my word, she doth not know a heart.
        Meet me in London, then,
    Twenty days hence, and thou shalt see
Me fresher and more fat, by being with men,
Than if I had stay’d still with her and thee.
For God’s sake, if you can, be you so too;
    I will give you
There to another friend, whom we shall find
As glad to have my body as my mind.

THE PRIMROSE
    BEING AT MONTGOMERY CASTLE UPON THE HILL, ON WHICH IT IS SITUATE.
           UPON this Primrose hill,
       Where, if heaven would distil
A shower of rain, each several drop might go
To his own primrose, and grow manna so;
And where their form, and their infinity
       Make a terrestrial galaxy,
       As the small stars do in the sky;
I walk to find a true love; and I see
That ‘tis not a mere woman, that is she,
But must or more or less than woman be.
           Yet know I not, which flower
       I wish; a six, or four;
For should my true-love less than woman be,
She were scarce anything; and then, should she
Be more than woman, she would get above
       All thought of sex, and think to move
       My heart to study her, and not to love.
Both these were monsters; since there must reside
Falsehood in woman, I could more abide,
She were by art, than nature falsified.
           Live, primrose, then, and thrive
       With thy true number five;
And, woman, whom this flower doth represent,
With this mysterious number be content;
Ten is the farthest number; if half ten
       Belongs to each woman, then
       Each woman may take half us men;
Or — if this will not serve their turn — since all
Numbers are odd, or even, and they fall
First into five, women may take us all.

THE RELIC.
           WHEN my grave is broke up again
       Some second guest to entertain,
       — For graves have learn’d that woman-head,
       To be to more than one a bed —
      And he that digs it, spies
A bracelet of bright hair about the bone,
      Will he not let us alone,
And think that there a loving couple lies,
Who thought that this device might be some way
To make their souls at the last busy day
Meet at this grave, and make a little stay?
           If this fall in a time, or land,
       Where mass-devotion doth command,
       Then he that digs us up will bring
       Us to the bishop or the king,
      To make us relics; then
Thou shalt be a Mary Magdalen, and I
      A something else