Come my Celia, let us prove,
While we may, the sports of love.
Time will not be ours for ever:
He at length our good will sever.
Spend not then his gifts in vain;
Suns that set may rise again,
But if once we lose this light
'Tis, with us, perpetual night.
Why should we defer our joys?
Fame and rumour are but toys.
Cannot we delude the eyes
Of a few poor household spies?
Or his easier ears beguile,
So removed by our wile?
'Tis no sin love's fruit to steal,
But the sweet theft to reveal;
To be taken, to be seen,
These have crimes accounted been.
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Poet
Ben Jonson
1572–1637
POET’S REGION
England
SCHOOL / PERIOD
Renaissance
Subjects
Time & Brevity,
Relationships,
Living,
Love,
Men & Women,
Romantic Love,
Classic Love,
Desire,
Infatuation & Crushes
Poetic Terms
Couplet
Ben Jonson’s “Song to Celia” is known to millions as “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes.” Jonson was educated at the prestigious Westminster School in London. He took up acting, and by 1597 he was writing original plays. Jonson’s first widely acclaimed play, Every Man in His Humour, included William Shakespeare in its cast.
Continue reading this biography
Poems by Ben Jonson
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More poems by Ben Jonson (35 poems)
- A Sonnet to the Noble Lady, the Lady Mary Wroth
- An Elegy
- An Epitaph on S.P.
- An Ode to Himself
- Cynthia's Revels: Queen and huntress, chaste and fair
- Epicoene, or the Silent Woman: Still to be neat, still to be drest
- Epigrams: On my First Son
- Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. H.
- Inviting a Friend to Supper
- My Picture Left in Scotland
- Ode to Himself
- On English Monsieur
- On Gut
- On My First Daughter
- On Playwright
- On Spies
- Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount
- Song to Celia
- Song: To Celia
- Though I Am Young and Cannot Tell
- To Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland
- To Fool or Knave
- To Heaven
- To John Donne
- To Lucy, Countess of Bedford, with John Donne's Satires
- To Penshurst
- To Sir Henry Cary
- To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Morison
- To the Memory of My Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare
- To the Reader
Poem of the Day: My Picture Left in Scotland
