Romantic Love

But I will be A bridegroom in my death, and run into ’t As to a lover’s bed.

Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows bent.

My love’s More richer than my tongue.

An old black ram Is tupping your white ewe.

Take, O take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn: But my kisses bring again, bring again, Seals of love, but seal’d in vain, seal’d in vain. 43

Love sought is good, but giv’n unsought is better.

I may command where I adore.

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, And dallies with the innocence of love, Like the old age.

Let still the woman take An elder than herself, so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband’s heart: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, Than women’s are.

Then, let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent; For women are as roses, whose fair flower Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.

If ever thou shalt love, In the sweet pangs of it remember me; For such as I am all true lovers are: Unstaid and skittish in all motions else Save in the constant image of the creature That is belov’d.

Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man’s son doth know.

What is love? ’tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

The kiss you take is better than you give.

For to be wise, and love, Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above.

I lov’d Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; When little fears grow great, great love grows there.

Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.

So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly.

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

It was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino, That o’er the green corn-field did pass, In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding; Sweet lovers love the spring.

Down on your knees, And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love.

From the east to western Ind, No jewel is like Rosalind.

The wounds invisible That love’s keen arrows make.