Resolve me now what spirit hath delight, If by full feed you kill the appetite? That stomach healthi'st is, that ne'er was cloy'd, Why not that Love the best then, ne'er enjoy'd? Since nat'rally the blood, when tam'd or sated, Will cool so fast it leaves the object hated. Pleasures, like wonders, quickly lose their price When Reason or Experience makes us wise.
To close my argument then. I dare say (And without Paradox) as well we may 110 Enjoy our Love and yet preserve Desire, As warm our hands by putting out the fire.
[_Paradox. That Fruition, &c._] Put less tersely but perhaps better by Dryden's most original heroine, Doralice, in _Marriage à la Mode_, 'The only way to keep us true to each other is never to enjoy'. The notion is old enough, and several other seventeenth-century poets have treated it.]
[Line: 22 Nobody has ever assigned a (to me, at least) plausible reason for this universal fancy of the seventeenth century about the jellification of shooting-stars. It is curious, but not inexplicable, that Browne does not touch it.]
[Line: 31 King has very coolly turned the Pygmalion story upside down to suit his thesis.]
[Line: 50 The talking and blushing turtle (i.e. dove) is another remarkable poetical licence.]
[Line: 77 Heat _ad Octo_] An obviously alchemical phrase which I have not interpreted.]
[Line: 100 in] Orig. 'inne' = 'get in'. Cf. _All's Well that Ends Well_, 1. iii, 'to in the crop'.]
_El sabio muda conscio: El loco persevera._
We lov'd as friends now twenty years and more: Is't time or reason, think you, to give o'er? When, though two prenti'ships set Jacob free, I have not held my Rachel dear at three.
Yet will I not your levity accuse; Continuance sometimes is the worse abuse. In judgement I might rather hold it strange, If, like the fleeting world, you did not change: Be it your wisdom therefore to retract, When perseverance oft is folly's act. 10
In pity I can think, that what you do Hath Justice in't, and some Religion too; For of all virtues Moral or Divine, We know, but Love, none must in Heaven shine: Well did you the presumption then foresee Of counterfeiting immortality: Since had you kept our loves too long alive, We might invade Heaven's prerogative; Or in our progress, like the Jews, comprise The Legend of an earthly Paradise. 20