XLIV Lewd Love Is Loss
Misdeeming eye! that stoopeth to the lure
Of mortal worths, not worth so worthy love;
All beauty’s base, all graces are impure,
That do thy erring thoughts from God remove.
Sparks to the fire, the beams yield to the sun, 5
All grace to God, from whom all graces run.
If picture move, more should the pattern please;
No shadow can with shadowed thing compare,
And fairest shapes, whereon our loves do seize,
But silly signs of God’s high beauty are. 10
Go, starving sense, feed thou on earthly mast;
True love, in heaven seek thou thy sweet repast.
Glean not in barren soil these offal ears,
Sith reap thou may’st whole harvests of delight;
Base joys with griefs, bad hopes do end with fears, 15
Lewd love with loss, evil peace with deadly fight:
God’s love alone doth end with endless ease,
Whose joys in hope, whose hope concludes in peace.
Let not the luring train of fancies trap,
Or gracious features, proofs of Nature’s skill, 20
Lull Reason’s force asleep in Error’s lap,
Or draw thy wit to bent of wanton will.
The fairest flowers have not the sweetest smell;
A seeming heaven proves oft a damning hell.
Self-pleasing souls, that play with beauty’s bait, 25
In shining shroud may swallow fatal hook;
Where eager sight on semblant fair doth wait,
A lock it proves, that first was but a look:
The fish with ease into the net doth glide,
But to get out the way is not so wide. 30
So long the fly doth dally with the flame,
Until his singèd wings do force his fall;
So long the eye doth follow fancy’s game,
Till love hath left the heart in heavy thrall.
Soon may the mind be cast in Cupid’s jail, 35
But hard it is imprisoned thoughts to bail.
Oh! loathe that love whose final aim is lust,
Moth of the mind, eclipse of reason’s light;
The grave of grace, the mole of Nature’s rust,
The wrack of wit, the wrong of every right; 40
In sum, an ill whose harms no tongue can tell;
In which to live is death, to die is hell.
Robert Southwell.