I Would With Such Perfection Govern, Sir,

Be Cheerful; Wipe Thine Eyes: Some Falls Are Means The Happier To Arise

There Is A Willow Grows Aslant A Brook, That Shows His Hoar Leaves In The Glassy Stream; There With Fantastic Garlands Did She Come Of Crow-flowers, Nettles, Daisies, And Long Purples That Liberal Shepherds Give A Grosser Name, But Our Cold Maids Do Dead Men's Fingers Call Them: There, On The Pendent Boughs Her Coronet Weeds Clambering To Hang, An Envious Sliver Broke; When Down Her Weedy Trophies And Herself Fell In The Weeping Brook.

Let Me Twine Mine Arms About That Body, Where Against My Grained Ash An Hundred Times Hath Broke And Scarr'd The Moon With Splinters: Here I Clip The Anvil Of My Sword, And Do Contest As Hotly And As Nobly With Thy Love As Ever In Ambitious Strength I Did Contend Against Thy Valour. Know Thou First, I Loved The Maid I Married; Never Man Sigh'd Truer Breath; But That I See Thee Here, Thou Noble Thing! More Dances My Rapt Heart Than When I First My Wedded Mistress Saw Bestride My Threshold.

An Old Man, Broken With The Storms Of State, Is Come To Lay His Weary Bones Among Ye; Give Him A Little Earth For Charity!

Tis Better Using France Than Trusting France; Let Us Be Back'd With God, And With The Seas, Which He Hath Given For Fence Impregnable, And With Their Helps Only Defend Ourselves; In Them, And In Ourselves, Our Safety Lies.