Gateway to the Classics: Oxford Book of English Verse, Part 2 by Arthur Quiller-Couch
 
Oxford Book of English Verse, Part 2 by  Arthur Quiller-Couch

Persuasions to Joy: A Song

If the quick spirits in your eye

Now languish and anon must die;

If every sweet and every grace

Must fly from that forsaken face;

Then, Celia, let us reap our joys

Ere Time such goodly fruit destroys.


Or if that golden fleece must grow

For ever free from agéd snow;

If those bright suns must know no shade,

Nor your fresh beauties ever fade;

Then fear not, Celia, to bestow

What, still being gather'd, still must grow.


Thus either Time his sickle brings

In vain, or else in vain his wings.

— Thomas Carew
1595?-1639?   


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