Poem for November 13, 2028

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,

Before I knew thy face or name,

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,

Angels affect us oft, and worship'd be;

Still when, to where thou wert, I came,

Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.

But since my soul, whose child love is,

Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,

More subtile than the parent is,

Love must not be, but take a body too,

And therefore what thou wert, and who,

I bid Love ask, and now

That it assume thy body, I allow,

And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,

And so more steadily to have gone,

With wares which would sink admiration,

I saw, I had love's pinnace overfraught,

Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon

Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;

For, nor in nothing, nor in things

Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;

Then as an Angel, face, and wings

Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,

So thy love may be my loves sphere;

Just such disparity

As is twixt Air and Angels' purity,

'Twixt women's love, and men's will ever be.