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CAELICA: 61, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Caelica, while you do swear you love me best
Last Line: But when requiting love is judge.
Alternate Author Name(s): Brooke, 1st Baron; Brooke, Lord


Caelica, while you do swear you love me best,
And ever loved only me,
I feel that all powers are oppressed
By love, and love by destiny.

For as the child in swaddling-bands,
When it doth see the nurse come nigh,
With smiles and crows doth lift the hands,
Yet still must in the cradle lie;
So in the boat of fate I row,
And looking to you, from you go.

When I see in thy once-beloved brows
The heavy marks of constant love,
I call to mind my broken vows,
And child-like to the nurse would move;

But love is of the Phoenix-kind,
And burns itself in self-made fire
To breed still new birds in the mind
From ashes of the old desire,
And hath his wings from constancy,
As mountains called of moving be.

Then Caelica lose not heart-eloquence,
Love understands not, come again;
Who changes in her own defense
Needs not cry to the deaf in vain.

Love is no true made looking glass,
Which perfect yields the shape we bring,
It ugly shows us all that was,
And flatters every future thing.
When Phoebus' beams no more appear
'Tis darker that the day was here.

Change, I confess, it is a hateful power
To them that all at once must think,
Yet nature made both sweet and sour,
She gave the eye a lid to wink;

And though the youth that are estranged
From mother's lap to other skies
Do think that nature there is changed,
Because at home their knowledge lies,
Yet shall they see, who far have gone,
That pleasure speaks more tongues than one.

The leaves fall off when sap goes to the root,
The warmth doth clothe the bough again,
But to the dead tree what doth boot
The silly man's manuring pain?

Unkindness may piece up again,
But kindness either changed or dead,
Self-pity may in fools complain;
Put thou thy horns on other's head,
For constant faith is made a drudge
But when requiting love is judge.





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