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Abraham Cowley
FROM Davideis, Book 3
[Awake, awake, my lyre]
Awake, awake, my lyre, |
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And tell thy silent master's humble tale |
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In sounds that may prevail, |
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Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire, |
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Though so exalted she |
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And I so lowly be, |
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Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.
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Hark, how the strings awake, |
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And though the moving hand approach not near, |
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Themselves with awful fear |
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A kind of numerous trembling make. |
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Now all thy forces try, |
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Now all thy charms apply, |
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Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.
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Weak lyre ! thy virtue sure |
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Is useless here, since thou art only found |
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To cure but not to wound, |
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And she to wound but not to cure. |
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Too weak, too, wilt thou prove |
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My passion to remove ; |
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Physic to other ills, thou 'rt nourishment to love.
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Sleep, sleep again, my lyre, |
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For thou canst never tell my humble tale |
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In sounds that will prevail, |
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Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire ; |
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All thy vain mirth lay by, |
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Bid thy strings silent lie ; |
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Sleep, sleep again, my lyre, and let thy master die. |
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Source:
Poetry of the English Renaissance 1509-1660.
J. William Hebel and Hoyt H. Hudson, eds.
New York: F. S. Crofts & Co., 1941. 835.
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