Remove your siege from my unyielding heart;

To love’s alarms it will not ope the gate.

Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your

flatt‘ry;

For where a heart is hard they make no batt’ry.’

‘What, canst thou talk?’ quoth she. ‘Hast thou a tongue?

O, would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing!

Thy mermaid’s voice hath done me double wrong.

I had my load before, now pressed with bearing:

Melodious discord, heavenly tune harsh sounding,

Ears’ deep-sweet music, and heart’s deep-sore

wounding.

‘Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love

That inward beauty and invisible;

Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move

Each part in me that were but sensible.

Though neither eyes nor ears to hear nor see,

Yet should I be in love by touching thee.

‘Say that the sense of feeling were bereft me,

And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,

And nothing but the very smell were left me,

Yet would my love to thee be still as much;

For from the stillitory of thy face excelling

Comes breath perfumed, that breedeth love by

smelling.

‘But O, what banquet wert thou to the taste,

Being nurse and feeder of the other four!

Would they not wish the feast might ever last

And bid suspicion double-lock the door

Lest jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest,

Should by his stealing-in disturb the feast?’

Once more the ruby-coloured portal opened

Which to his speech did honey passage yield,

Like a red morn that ever yet betokened

Wrack to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,

Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.

This ill presage advisedly she marketh.

Even as the wind is hushed before it raineth,

Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh,

Or as the berry breaks before it staineth,

Or like the deadly bullet of a gun,

His meaning struck her ere his words begun,

And at his look she flatly falleth down,

For looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth;

A smile recures the wounding of a frown,

But blessed bankrupt that by loss so thriveth!

The silly boy, believing she is dead,

Claps her pale cheek till clapping makes it red,

And, all amazed, brake off his late intent,

For sharply he did think to reprehend her,

Which cunning love did wittily prevent.

Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her!

For on the grass she lies as she were slain,

Till his breath breatheth life in her again.

He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks,

He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard;

He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks

To mend the hurt that his unkindness marred.

He kisses her; and she, by her good will,

Will never rise, so he will kiss her still.

The night of sorrow now is turned to day.

Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth,

Like the fair sun when, in his fresh array,

He cheers the morn, and all the earth relieveth;

And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,

So is her face illumined with her eye,

Whose beams upon his hairless face are fixed,

As if from thence they borrowed all their shine.

Were never four such lamps together mixed,

Had not his clouded with his brow’s repine.

But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,

Shone like the moon in water seen by night.

‘O, where am I?’ quoth she; ‘in earth or heaven,

Or in the ocean drenched, or in the fire?

What hour is this: or morn or weary even?

Do I delight to die, or life desire?

But now I lived, and life was death’s annoy;

But now I died, and death was lively joy.

‘O, thou didst kill me; kill me once again!

Thy eyes’ shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine,

Hath taught them scornful tricks, and such disdain

That they have murdered this poor heart of mine,

And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen,

But for thy piteous lips no more had seen.

‘Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!

O, never let their crimson liveries wear,

And as they last, their verdure still endure

To drive infection from the dangerous year,

That the star-gazers, having writ on death,

May say the plague is banished by thy breath!

‘Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,

What bargains may I make still to be sealing?

To sell myself I can be well contented,

So thou wilt buy, and pay, and use good dealing;

Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips

Set thy seal manual on my wax-red lips.

‘A thousand kisses buys my heart from me;

And pay them at thy leisure, one by one.

What is ten hundred touches unto thee?

Are they not quickly told, and quickly gone?

Say for non-payment that the debt should double,

Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?’

‘Fair queen,’ quoth he, ‘if any love you owe me,

Measure my strangeness with my unripe years.

Before I know myself, seek not to know me.

No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears.

The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast,

Or, being early plucked, is sour to taste.

‘Look, the world’s comforter with weary gait