Francis Quarles. The Fickle State of Lovers.

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.