Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, UPON LOVE FONDLY REFUSED FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE, by THOMAS RANDOLPH



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

UPON LOVE FONDLY REFUSED FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Nature, creation's law, is judg'd by sense
Last Line: What youth and pleasure prompts us to.


NATURE, Creation's law, is judg'd by sense,
Not by the tyrant conscience.
Then our commission gives us leave to do,
What youth and pleasure prompts us to:
For we must question else heaven's great decree,
And tax it with a treachery,
If things made sweet to tempt our appetite
Should with a guilt stain the delight.
Higher powers rule us, ourselves can nothing do;
Who made us love, made't lawful too.
It was not love, but love transform'd to vice,
Ravish'd by envious avarice,
Made women first impropriate: all were free:
Enclosures men's inventions be.
I' th' golden age no action could be found
For trespass on my neighbour's ground:
'Twas just with any fair to mix our blood;
The best is most diffusive good.
She that confines her beams to one man's sight,
Is a dark lanthorm to a glorious light.
Say, does the virgin-spring less chaste appear,
'Cause many thirsts are quenched there?
Or have you not with the same odours met,
When more have smelt your violet?
The Phoenix is not angry at her nest,
'Cause her perfumes make others blest.
Though incense to th' eternal gods be meant,
Yet mortals rival in the scent.
Man is the lord of creatures, yet we see
That all his vassals' loves are free,
The severe wedlock's fetters do not bind
The pard's inflam'd and amorous mind;
But that he may be like a bridegroom led
Even to the royal lion's bed.
the birds may for a year their loves confine,
But make new choice each Valentine.
If our affections then more servile be
Than are our slaves, where is man's sovereignty?
Why, then, by pleasing more, should you less please,
And spare the sweets, being more sweet than these?
If the fresh trunk have sap enough to give
That each insertive branch may live;
The gard'ner grafts not only apples there,
But adds the warden and the pear.
The peach and apricot together grow,
The cherry and the damson too,
Till he hath made by skilful husbandry
An entire orchard of one tree.
So lest our paradise perfection want,
We may as well inoculate as plant.
What's conscience but a beldame's midnight theme,
Or nodding nurse's idle dream?
So feign'd as are the goblins, elves, and fairies
To watch their orchards and their dairies.
For who can tell, when first her reign begun?
I' th' state of innocence was none:
And since large conscience (as the proverb shows)
In the same sense with bad one goes,
The less the better then, whence this will fall,
'Tis to be perfect to have none at all.
Suppose it be a virtue rich and pure,
'Tis not for spring or summer, sure.
Nor yet for autumn; love must have his prime,
His warmer heats and harvest-time.
Till we have flourish'd, grown, and reap'd our wishes;
What conscience dares oppose our kisses?
But when time's colder hand leads us near home,
Then let that winter-virtue come:
Frost is till then prodigious; we may do
What youth and pleasure prompts us to.





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