Desire

Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy.

The ruling passion, be it what it will, The ruling passion conquers reason still.

Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But ev’ry woman is at heart a rake.

In men, we various ruling passions find; In women, two almost divide the kind; Those, only fix’d, they first or last obey, The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.

Wise wretch! with pleasures too refin’d to please; With too much spirit to be e’er at ease; With too much quickness ever to be taught; With too much thinking to have common thought. You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.

Man may escape from rope and gun; Nay, some have outliv’d the doctor’s pill: Who takes a woman must be undone, That basilisk is sure to kill. The fly that sips treacle is lost in the sweets, So he that tastes woman, woman, woman, He that tastes woman, ruin meets.

Man wants but little, nor that little long.

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

For present joys are more to flesh and blood Than a dull prospect of a distant good.

Pains of love be sweeter far Than all other pleasures are.

Give me more love or more disdain; The torrid or the frozen zone: Bring equal ease unto my pain; The temperate affords me none.

Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale when May is past; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more if east or west The Phoenix builds her spicy nest; For unto you at last she flies, And in your fragrant bosom dies.

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

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, If I lack’d anything.

Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I’ll not look for wine. 2 The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine; But might I of Jove’s nectar sup, I would not change for thine.

Come my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love; Time will not be ours forever, 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.

Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee, As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be, To taste whole joys.

Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks.

Sweetest love, I do not go, For weariness of thee, Nor in hope the world can show A fitter love for me; But since that I Must die at last, ’tis best, To use my self in jest Thus by feign’d deaths to die.

For God sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee.

O! a kiss Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!

Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus, with pink eyne!