poem 17
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done; you get no more from me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows.
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wonder, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
( One of many sonnets by Michael Drayton (1563 -1631) I like the way its tough beginning, a little like a Country and Western lyric, shows his worldliness, but then suddenly in the last line he cannot quite bear to leave go and offers hope that the love might be recovered. He is a poet with a prodigious output, including 'Poly-Olbion' in which he attempted to describe every ancient site on Great Britain, and a fantasy called 'Nimphidia'. I add another sonnet which dazzles but also bedazzles, so I do not always get his meaning. A tour-de-force or just too over-complicated?)
Nothing but No, and Aye, and Aye, and No?
How falls it out so strangely you reply?
I tell ye, fair, I'll not be answered so,
With this affirming No, denying Aye.
I say "I love", you slightly answer Aye;
I say "you love", you pule me out a No;
I say "I die", you echo me an Aye;
"Save me", I cry, you sigh me out a No;
Must woe and I have nought but No and Aye?
No I am I, if I no more can have;
Answer no more, with silence make reply,
And let me take myself what I do crave.
Let No and Aye with I and you be so;
Then answer No, and Aye, and Aye and No.