Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swelled up to rest
The violet's reclining head,
Sat we two, one
another's best.
Our hands were firmly cemented
With a fast balm,
which thence did spring;
Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes upon one
double string;
So to'intergraft our
hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us
one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
As 'twixt two equal armies fate
Suspends uncertain victory,
Our souls (which to advance their state
Were gone out) hung 'twixt her
and me.
And whilst our souls negotiate there,
We like sepulchral statues
lay;
All day, the same our postures were,
And we said nothing, all the
day.
If any, so by love refined
That he soul's language
understood,
And by good love were grown all mind,
Within convenient distance
stood,
He (though he knew not which soul spake,
Because both meant, both spake
the same)
Might thence a new concoction take
And part far purer than he
came.
This ecstasy doth unperplex,
We said, and tell us what we
love;
We see by this it was not sex,
We see we
saw not what did move;
But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things, they know
not what,
Love these mixed souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this
and that.
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and
the size,
(All which before was poor and scant)
Redoubles still, and
multiplies.
When love with one another so
Interinanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of
loneliness controls.
We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and
made,
For, th' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can
invade.
But O alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They're ours, though they're not
we; we are
The intelligences, they the
spheres.
We owe them thanks, because they
thus
Did us, to us at first
convey,
Yielded their forces, sense to us,
Nor are dross to us, but
allay.
On man heaven's influence works not
so,
But that it first imprints the
air;
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body
first repair.
As our blood labors to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it
can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtle knot which makes
us man,
So must pure lovers' souls descend
To' affections, and to
faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison
lies.
To'our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love revealed may
look;
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
And if some lover, such as we,
Have heard this dialogue of
one,
Let him still mark us, he shall see
Small change, when we're to
bodies gone.
