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Twice or thrice had I loved thee, |
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Before I knew thy face or name; |
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So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame |
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Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be. |
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Still when, to where thou wert, I came, |
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Some lovely glorious nothing I did see. |
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But since my soul, whose child love is, |
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Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do, |
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More subtle than the parent is |
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Love must not be, but take a body too; |
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And therefore what thou wert, and who, |
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I bid Love ask, and now |
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That I assume thy body, I allow, |
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And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow. |
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Whilst thus to ballast love I thought, |
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And so more steadily to have gone, |
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With wares which would sink admiration, |
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I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught; |
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Thy every hair for love to work upon |
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Is much too much; some fitter must be sought; |
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For, nor in nothing, nor in things |
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Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere; |
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Then as an angel face and wings |
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Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear, |
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So thy love may be my love's sphere; |
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Just such disparity |
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As is 'twixt air's and angel's purity, |
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'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be. |
