To Chloris

Farewel, My Sweet, until I come,
Improv'd in Merit, for thy sake,
With Characters of Honour home,
Such, as thou canst not then but take.

To Loyalty my love must bow,
My Honour too calls to the Field,
Where, for a Ladies busk, I now
Must keen, and sturdy Iron wield.

Yet, when I rush into those Arms,
Where Death, and Danger do combine,
I shall less subject be to harms,
Than to those killing Eyes of thine.

Since I could live in thy Disdain,
Thou art so far become my Fate,
That I by nothing can be slain,
Until thy Sentence speaks my Date.

But, if I seem to fall in War,
T' excuse the murder you commit,
Be to my Memory just so far,
As in thy Heart t' acknowledg it;

That's all, I ask; which thou must give
To him, that dying, takes a pride
It is for thee; and would not live
Sole Prince of all the world beside.