Relationships and Family

The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers.

In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

And all to leave what with his toil he won To that unfeather’d two-legg’d thing, a son.

Your Cleopatra; Dolabella’s Cleopatra; every man’s Cleopatra.

When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat; Yet, fool’d with hope, men favor the deceit; Trust on, and think tomorrow will repay. Tomorrow’s falser than the former day.

Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, Have ye not seen us walking every day? Was there a tree about which did not know The love betwixt us two?

A mighty pain to love it is, And ’tis a pain that pain to miss; But of all pains, the greatest pain It is to love, but love in vain.

Ah yet, ere I descend to the grave May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, and many books, both true, Both wise, and both delightful too!

Love is a boy by poets styled; Then spare the rod, and spoil the child.

Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offense returning, to regain Love once possess’d.

Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end; Not wedlock-treachery.

Skill’d to retire, and in retiring draw Hearts after them tangled in amorous nets.

The evening star, Love’s harbinger.

I feel The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh, Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

Our state cannot be sever’d; we are one, One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.

In her face excuse Came prologue, and apology too prompt.

So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life.

Imparadis’d in one another’s arms.

Implied Subjection, but requir’d with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best receiv’d, Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet reluctant amorous delay.

The infernal serpent; he it was, whose guile, Stirr’d up with envy and revenge, deceiv’d The mother of mankind.

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden.

It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th’ eclipse, and rigg’d with curses dark, That sunk so low that sacred head of thine.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat: So I did sit and eat.

I sent thee late a rosy wreath, Not so much honoring thee As giving it a hope that there It could not wither’d be. But thou thereon didst only breathe, And sent’st it back to me; Since when it grows and smells, I swear, Not of itself, but thee.