Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO CELIA, UPON LOVE'S UBIQUITY, by THOMAS CAREW


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO CELIA, UPON LOVE'S UBIQUITY, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: As one that strives, being sick, and sick to death
Last Line: I'll think on you, and by you think on heaven.
Subject(s): Love - Nature Of


As one that strives, being sick, and sick to death,
By changing places to preserve a breath,
A tedious restless breath, removes, and tries
A thousand rooms, a thousand policies,
To cozen pain, when he thinks to find ease,
At last he finds all change but his disease;
So, like a ball with fire and powder fill'd,
I restless am, yet live, each minute kill'd,
And with that moving torture must retain,
With change of all things else, a constant pain.
Say I stay with you, presence is to me
Naught but a light to show my misery;
And partings are as racks to plague love on,
The further stretch'd, the more affliction.
Go I to Holland, France, or furthest Ind,
I change but only countries, not my mind;
And though I pass through air and water free,
Despair and hopeless fate still follow me.
Whilst in the bosom of the waves I reel.
My heart I'll liken to the tottering keel,
The sea to my own troubled fate, the wind
To your disdain, sent from a soul unkind.
But when I lift my sad looks to the skies,
Then shall I think I see my Celia's eyes;
And when a cloud or storm appears between,
I shall remember what her frowns have been.
Thus, whatsoever course my Fates allow,
All things but make me mind my business, you.
The good things that I meet, I think streams be
From you, the fountain; but when bad I see,
How vile and cursed is that thing, think I,
That to such goodness is so contrary!
My whole life is 'bout you, the centre star,
But a perpetual motion circular.
I am the dial's hand, still walking round,
You are the compass: and I never sound
Beyond your circle, neither can I show
Aught but what first expressed is in you:
That, wheresoever my tears do cause me move,
My fate still keeps me bounded with your love;
Which, ere it die, or be extinct in me,
Time shall stand still, and moist waves flaming be.
Yet, being gone, think not on me: I am
A thing too wretched for thy thoughts to name:
But when I die, and wish all comforts given,
I'll think on you, and by you think on heaven.





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