Shakespeare didn’t monopolise the great love sonnets of the Elizabethan age.
The one below, by Michael Drayton, has kept its appeal down the generations, perhaps because, in spite of the bravura of his farewells, the poet can’t help revealing his unquenchable longing to regain his lover’s affections.
The PS may act as a rueful adieu to St Valentine and his day!
SINCE THERE’S NO HELP, COME LET US KISS AND PART
Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part;
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart
That thus so cleanly, I myself can free;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,
When his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou mightst him yet recover.
PS: LESSONS FOR GETTING THROUGH SPRING
Feign indifference to the daffodils
And the birds’ ecstatic trills.
Ignore that cherry tree
Whose pink bounty fell confetti-like
Upon the vanished he.
Nowhere to flee
From what won’t be.
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