Waller. To A Very Young Lady.

TO A VERY YOUNG LADY.
by Edmund Waller

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.

Yet fairest blossom do not slight
That age which you may know so soon;
That Rosy Morn resigns her light,
And milder Glory to the Noon:
    And then what wonders shall you do,
    whose dawning Beauty warms us so?

Hope waits upon the flowry prime,
And Summer though it be less gay,
Yet is not lookt on as a time
Of declination or decay.
    For with a full hand That does bring
    All that was promis'd by the Spring.

Source:
The Anchor Anthology of Sixteenth-Century Verse. Vol 2.
Richard S. Sylvester, ed.
Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1974. 462.