Elegy IX: The Autumnal
- No spring nor summer Beauty hath such grace
- As I have seen in one autumnall face.
- Young beauties force our love, and that's a rape,
- This doth but counsel, yet you cannot 'scape.
- If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame,
- Affection here takes Reverence's name.
- Were her first years the Golden Age; that's true,
- But now she's gold oft tried, and ever new.
- That was her torrid and inflaming time,
- This is her tolerable Tropique clime.
- Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence,
- He in a fever wishes pestilence.
- Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were,
- They were Love's graves; for else he is no where.
- Yet lies not Love dead here, but here doth sit
- Vowed to this trench, like an Anachorit.
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- And here, till hers, which must be his death, come,
- He doth not dig a grave, but build a tomb.
- Here dwells he, though he sojourn ev'ry where,
- In progress, yet his standing house is here.
- Here, where still evening is; not noon, nor night;
- Where no voluptuousness, yet all delight
- In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
- You may at revels, you at counsel, sit.
- This is Love's timber, youth his under-wood;
- There he, as wine in June enrages blood,
- Which then comes seasonabliest, when our taste
- And appetite to other things is past.
- Xerxes' strange Lydian love, the Platane tree,
- Was loved for age, none being so large as she,
- Or else because, being young, nature did bless
- Her youth with age's glory, Barrenness.
- If we love things long sought, Age is a thing
- Which we are fifty years in compassing;
- If transitory things, which soon decay,
- Age must be loveliest at the latest day.
- But name not winter-faces, whose skin's slack;
- Lank, as an unthrift's purse; but a soul's sack;
- Whose eyes seek light within, for all here's shade;
- Whose mouths are holes, rather worn out than made;
- Whose every tooth to a several place is gone,
- To vex their souls at Resurrection;
- Name not these living deaths-heads unto me,
- For these, not ancient, but antique be.
- I hate extremes; yet I had rather stay
- With tombs than cradles, to wear out a day.
- Since such love's natural lation is, may still
- My love descend, and journey down the hill,
- Not panting after growing beauties so,
- I shall ebb out with them, who homeward go.
- --oOo-- -