Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COMMANDED BY HIS MISTRESS TO WOO FOR HER, by GIAMBATTISTA MARINI


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COMMANDED BY HIS MISTRESS TO WOO FOR HER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Strange kind of love! That knows no president
Last Line: To love I seem not, 'cause I love too much.
Alternate Author Name(s): Marino, Giambattista; Marino, Giovanni Battista
Subject(s): Courtship


STRANGE kind of love! that knows no president,
A faith so firm as passeth Faith's extent,
By a tyrannic beauty long subdu'd,
I now must sue for her to whom I su'd,
Unhappy Orator! who, though I move
For pity, pity cannot hope to prove:
Employing thus against myself my breath,
And in another's life begging my death.

But if such moving powers my accents have,
Why first my own redress do I not crave?
What hopes that I to pity should incline
Another's breast, who can move none in thine?
Or how can the griev'd patient look for ease,
When the physician suffers the disease?
If thy sharp wounds from me expect their cure,
'Tis fit those first be heal'd that I endure.

Ungentle fair one! why dost thou dispense
Unequally thy sacred influence?
Why pining me, offer'st the precious food
To one by whom nor priz'd, nor understood;
So some clear brook to the full main, to pay
Her needless crystal tribute hastes away,
Profusely foolish; whilst her niggard tide
Starves the poor flowers that grow along her side.

Thou who my glories art design'd to own,
Come then, and reap the joys that I have sown:
Yet in thy pride acknowledge, though thou bear
The happy prize away, the palm I wear.
Nor the obedience of my flame accuse,
That what I sought, myself conspir'd to lose:
The hapless state where I am fix'd is such,
To love I seem not, 'cause I love too much.





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