Desire

Epicurean cooks Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite.

There’s beggary in the love that can be reckon’d.

The wren goes to ’t, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive.

O! what a deal of scorn looks beautiful In the contempt and anger of his lip.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house.

Holla your name to the reverberate hills, And make the babbling gossip of the air Cry out, “Olivia!”

O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe’er, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy, That it alone is high fantastical.

If music be the food of love, 37 play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O! it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odor!

The kiss you take is better than you give.

Fie, fie upon her! There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body.

I am giddy, expectation whirls me round. The imaginary relish is so sweet That it enchants my sense.

Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, a universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce a universal prey, And last eat up himself.

Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is.

Women are angels, wooing: Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.

O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardor gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn, And reason panders will.

When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows.

Why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on.

If you remember’st not the slightest folly That ever love did make thee run into, Thou hast not lov’d.

Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, reply.

There’s something tells me, but it is not love, I would not lose you; and you know yourself, Hate counsels not in such a quality.

They surfeited with honey and began To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little More than a little is by much too much.

See! how she leans her cheek upon her hand: O! that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek.

As a surfeit of the sweetest things The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.

O! who can hold a fire in his hand By thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December snow By thinking on fantastic summer’s heat? O, no! the apprehension of the good Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.