The Shepherd's Resolution

SHALL I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?

Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are;

Be she fairer than the day,

Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,

What care I how fair she be?

Shall my foolish heart be pin'd
'Cause I see a woman kind?
Or a well-disposed Nature
Joined with a lovely feature?
Be she meeker, kinder than
The turtle-dove-or pelican,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?

Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love?
Or her well-deservings known
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest,
Which may gain her name of Best,
If she be not such to me,

What care I how good she be?

George Wither

'Cause her fortune seems too high, Shall I play the fool and die? Those that bear a noble mind

Where they want of riches find,

Think what with them they would do, That without them dare to woo:

And unless that mind I see

What care I how great she be?

Great, or good, or kind, or fair,
I will ne'er the more despair :
If she love me, this believe,
I will die, ere she shall grieve.
If she slight me when

Woo,

I can scorn and let her go :

If she be not fit for me,

What care I for whom she be?

A Madrigal

AMARYLLIS I did woo,

And I courted Phillis too;
Daphne for her love I chose,
Chloris, for that damask rose
In her cheek, I held so dear,
Yea, a thousand liked well near;
And, in love with all together,
Feared the enjoying either :
'Cause to be of one possess'd,
Barr'd the hope of all the rest.

Thomas Carew

was probably born in Gloucestershire in 1589. Shortly after his death, in 1639, there appeared the volume Poems by Thomas Carew, Esq., one of the Gentlemen of the Privie Chamber and Sewer in Ordinary to His Majesty (Charles I.), London (1640). Burns, meeting with the song 'The Primrose,' 'altered it a little' (as he wrote to George Thomson), with a view to its publication in a collection. This is his version:

The Primrose

Dost ask me why I send thee here

This firstling of the infant year

Dost ask me what this Primrose shews,
Bepearl'd thus with morning dews?

I must whisper to thy ears,

The sweets of love are wash'd with tears,

This lovely native of the dale

Thou seest, how languid, pensive, pale.

Thou seest this bending stalk so weak,

That each way yielding doth not break.
I must tell thee, these reveal

The doubts and fears that lovers feel.'

An interesting comparison may be made with the versions of the same theme by Carew (p. 125), and Herrick (p. 136).

To Celia

Ask me no more where Jove bestows,
When June is past, the fading rose ;

For in your beauties' orient deep

These flow'rs, as in their causes, sleep.

Thomas Carew

Ask me no more whither do stray
The golden atoms of the day;

For, in pure love, heaven did prepare
Those powders to enrich your hair.

Ask me no more whither doth haste
The nightingale when May is past;
For in your sweet dividing throat
She winters, and keeps warm her note.

Ask me no more where those stars light, That downwards fall in dead of night; For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become as in their sphere.

Ask me no more if east or west
The phoenix builds her spicy nest;
For unto you at last she flies,
And in your fragrant bosom dies.

Mediocrity in Love rejected

GIVE me more love, or more disdain ;
The torrid or the frozen zone
Brings equal ease unto my pain;
The temperate affords me none:
Either extreme of love or hate
Is sweeter than a calm estate.

Give me a storm; if it be love,
Like Danae in a golden shower
I swim in pleasure; if it prove

Disdain, that torrent will devour
My vulture hopes and he's possess'd

:

Of Heaven, that's but from hell releas'd :
Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;
Give me more love or more disdain.

Love's Eternity

How ill doth he deserve a Lover's name
Whose pale weak flame

Can not retain

His heat in spite of absence or disdain,
But doth at once, like paper set on fire,
Burn and expire!

True Love can never change his seat ;

Nor did he ever love that could retreat.

That noble flame which my breast keeps alive

Shall still survive

When my soul's fled;

Nor shall my love die when my body's dead:

That shall wait on me to the lower shade,

And never fade;

My very ashes in their urn

Shall, like a hallow'd lamp, for ever burn.