Love
Deploring Clarastella's Inconstancie
From Clarastella (1650), Poems, &c.
Fair and yet cruel? strange me thinks that art
Should act amiss, where Nature plai's her part!
Can you a gentle Saint, a Tyrant prove?
Can your diviner soul forget to love?
Can Winter set in such a love-warm brest
Which was with so much heat but now possest?
Are the flames dying, and loves active fires
Congeal'd to frosts, and freez'd to cold desires?
And those fair Violet veins the verdant Spring
Did so enliven now no heat can bring?
Can you that carried Summer in your lips
Red as the Cherrie suffer an Eclipse?
That in the Apples of your cheeks did wear
A fertile Autumn now no fruit can bear?
All heat extinguisht? not one spark of fire
Now left, but to inkindle new desire?
Strange mixture this, when I at once may view
All the four seasons of the year in you!
Some health for pitty to my hopes restore?
Or love me not at all, or love me more!
Under this Equinox my shadows are
Quite round me; whilst I live in black despair;
Frigid nor torrid zones can I endure:
They bred cold Agues, these a Calenture.
Cite this poem
MLA
Heath, Robert. “Deploring Clarastella's Inconstancie.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/heath_r/51/.
Chicago
Heath, Robert. “Deploring Clarastella's Inconstancie.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/heath_r/51/.
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