Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham

To My Young Lady Lucy Sidney

1 Why came I so untimely forth
    Into a world which, wanting thee,
  Could entertain us with no worth
    Or shadow of felicity?
  That time should me so far remove
  From that which I was born to love!

2 Yet, fairest blossom! do not slight
    That age which you may know so soon;
  The rosy morn resigns her light
    And milder glory to the noon;
  And then what wonders shall you do,
  Whose dawning beauty warms us so?

3 Hope waits upon the flow’ry prime;
    And summer, though it be less gay,
  Yet is not look’d on as a time
    Of declination or decay;
  For with a full hand that does bring
  All that was promised by the spring.

[1] ‘Lady Lucy Sidney’: the younger sister of Lady Dorothea; afterwards married to Sir John Pelham.