POEM
Idea LXI
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love’s latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies;
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes—
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might’st him yet recover!
In late-seventeenth-century estimates of literary stature, Michael Drayton ranks only . . . MORE »
More Poems by Michael Drayton
Idea XLIII: Why should your fair eyes with such sovereign grace
"As Love and I, late harbour'd in one inn"
A Roundelay between Two Shepherds
