Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A LOVER AND HIS MISTRESS, by SIDNEY GODOLPHIN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A LOVER AND HIS MISTRESS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Tell me, lucinda, since my fate
Last Line: Not to know what to say.
Subject(s): Love - Nature Of


TELL me, Lucinda, since my fate,
And thy more powerful form decrees
My heart an immolation to thy shrine,
Where I am only to incline --
How I may love, and at what rate,
By what despairs and what degrees
I may my hopes dilate,
And my desires confine.

MISTRESS

First when thy flames begin
See they burn all within,
And so that lookers-on may not descry
Smoke in a sigh, or sparkles in an eye;
I would have had my love a good while there
Ere thy own heart had been aware,
And I myself would choose to know it
First, by thy care and cunning not to show it.

LOVER

When my love is your own way thus betray'd,
Must it be still afraid?
May it not be sharp-sighted too as well,
And find you know that which it durst not tell,
And from that knowledge think it may
Tell itself o'er a louder way?

MISTRESS

Let me alone awhile
And so thou maist beguile
(consent
My heart perhaps to a
(respect
Long time ere it were meant;
For while I dare not disapprove,
Lest it betray a knowledge of thy love,
I shall be so accustomed to allow,
As I shall scarce know how
To be displeased, when thou shalt it avow.

LOVER

When by this powerful silent sympathy
Our hearts are got thus nigh,
And that by one another soon
There needs no breath to go between,
Yet it will need
The tongue's sign too, as witness to the deed.

MISTRESS

Speak then, but when you whisper out the tale
Of what you ail,
Let it be so disordered, as I may
Guess only thence what you would say;
Then to be able to speak sense
Were an offence;
And 'twill thy passions tell the subtlest way
Not to know what to say.





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