Farewell To Love

• Whilst yet to prove
• I thought there was some deity in love,
• So did I reverence, and gave
• Worship; as atheists at their dying hour
• Call, what they cannot name, an unknown power,
• As ignorantly did I crave.
• Thus when
• Things not yet known are coveted by men,
• Our desires give them fashion, and so
• As they wax lesser, fall, as they size, grow.
•  
• But, from late fair,
• His highness sitting in a golden chair,
• Is not less cared for after three days
• By children, than the thing which lovers so
• Blindly admire, and with such worship woo;
• Being had, enjoying it decays;
• And thence,
• What before pleased them all, takes but one sense,
• And that so lamely, as it leaves behind
• A kind of sorrowing dulness to the mind.
•  
• Ah cannot we,
• As well as cocks and lions, jocund be
• After such pleasures, unless wise
• Nature decreed—since each such act, they say,
• Diminisheth the length of life a day—
• This; as she would man should despise
• The sport,
• Because that other curse of being short,
• And only for a minute made to be
• Eager, desires to raise posterity.
•  
• Since so, my mind
• Shall not desire what no man else can find;
• I 'll no more dote and run
• To pursue things which had endamaged me;
• And when I come where moving beauties be,
• As men do when the summer's sun
• Grows great,
• Though I admire their greatness, shun their heat.
• Each place can afford shadows; if all fail,
• 'Tis but applying worm-seed to the tail.