Francis Quarles


FROM

Henry Lawes' Airs and Dialogues, I.  1653.

O, the fickle state of lovers!
A heart perplexed with hopes and fears
Today a world of joy discovers,
And tomorrow's drowned in tears:
    A lover's state's like April's weather,
    Rain and sunshine both together.

If his mistress do but smile,
A heaven of joy is in his heart;
If her brow but frown a while,
Hell can find no greater smart:
    In a lover's breast doth dwell
    Very heaven, or very hell.





Elizabethan and Seventeenth-Century Lyrics.
Matthew W. Black, Ed.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Company, 1938.  310.






 back


  Site copyright ©1996-2004 Anniina Jokinen. All Rights Reserved.
  Created by Anniina Jokinen on May 25, 2004.

  Background by the kind permission of Stormi Wallpaper Boutique.