Love's Growth
- I scarce believe my love to be so pure
- As I had thought it was,
- Because it doth endure
- Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
- Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
- My love was infinite, if spring make it more.
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- But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
- With more, not only be no quintessence,
- But mix'd of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense,
- And of the sun his active vigour borrow,
- Love's not so pure, and abstract as they use
- To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;
- But as all else, being elemented too,
- Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.
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- And yet no greater, but more eminent,
- Love by the spring is grown;
- As in the firmament
- Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
- Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
- From love's awakened root do bud out now.
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- If, as in water stirr'd more circles be
- Produced by one, love such additions take,
- Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
- For they are all concentric unto thee;
- And though each spring do add to love new heat,
- As princes do in times of action get
- New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
- No winter shall abate this spring's increase.
From: Songs and Sonnets, 1633.
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