To her Eyes

by Edward, Lord Herbert of Chirbury


        BLACK eyes if you seem dark,
    It is because your beams are deep,
        And with your soul united keep :
                Who could discern
    Enough into them, there might learn,
        Whence they derive that mark ;
            And how their power is such,
That all the wonders which proceed from thence,
        Affecting more the mind than sense,
                Are not so much
            The works of light, as influence.

        As you then joined are
    Unto the Soul, so it again
        By its connexion doth pertain
                To that first cause,
    Who giving all their proper Laws,
        By you doth best declare
            How he at first being hid
Within the veil of an eternal night,
            Did frame for us a second light,
                And after bid
            It serve for ordinary sight.

        His image then you are.
    If there be any yet who doubt
        What power it is that doth look out
                Through that your black,
    He will not an example lack,
        If he suppose that there
            Were grey, or hazel Glass,
And that through them, though sight or soul might shine,
            He must yet at the last define,
                That beams which pass
            Through black, cannot be but divine.




Source:
The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse.
H. J. C. Grierson and G. Bullough, eds.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. 229-230.





to Lord Herbert


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