Love

To Cupid (Fond Love, deliver up thy Bow) [second printing]

by Charles Cotton 1630–1687

From Poems on Several Occasions (1689)

Love

Fond Love, deliver up thy Bow,
I am become more Love than thou,
I am as wanton grown, and wild,
Much less a Man, and more a Child,
From Venus born, of chaster kind,
A better Archer, though as blind.

Surrender without more ado,
I am both King and Subject too,
I will command, but must obey,
I am the Hunter, and the Prey,
I vanquish, yet am overcome,
And, sentencing, receive my doom.

No springing Beauty scapes my Dart,
And ev'ry ripe one wounds my Heart;
Thus whilst I wound, I wounded am,
And firing others turn to flame,
To shew how far love can combine
The Mortal part with the Divine.

Faith! quit thine Empire, and come down
That thou, and I may share the Crown,
I've try'd the worst thy arms can do,
Come then, and taste my power too,
Which (howsoe're it may fall short)
Will doubtless prove the better sport.

Yet do not; for in Field, and Town,
The Females are so loving grown,
So kind; or else so lustful, we
Can neither err, though neither see:
Keep then thine own Dominions, Lad,
Two Loves would make all Women mad.

MLA

Cotton, Charles. “To Cupid (Fond Love, deliver up thy Bow) [second printing].” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/cotton/159/.

Chicago

Cotton, Charles. “To Cupid (Fond Love, deliver up thy Bow) [second printing].” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/cotton/159/.

Read this poem with the Codex →

More by Charles Cotton