TO A YOUNG GENTLE-WOMAN [CONCERNING HER CHOICE] by RICHARD CRASHAW

Dear, heaven-designed SOUL!
Amongst the rest
Of suters that beseige your Maiden brest,
Why may not I
My fortune try
And venture to speak one good word
Not for my self alas, but for my dearer LORD?
You'ave seen allready, in this lower sphear
Of froth and bubbles, what to look for here.
Say, gentle soul, what can you find
But painted shapes,
Peacocks and Apes,
Illustrious flyes,
Guilded dunghills, glorious LYES,
Goodly surmises
And deep disguises,
Oathes of water, words of wind?
TRUTH biddes me say, 'tis time you cease to trust
Your soul to any son of dust.
'Tis time you listen to a braver love,
Which from above
Calls you up higher
And biddes you come
And choose your roome
Among his own fair sonnes of fire,
Where you among
The golden throng
That watches at his palace doores
May passe along
And follow those fair starres of yours;
Starrs much too fair and pure to wait upon
The false smiles of a sublunary sun.
Sweet, let me prophesy that at last t'will prove
Your wary love
Layes up his purer and more pretious vowes,
And meanes them for a farre more worthy SPOUSE
Then this world of Lyes can give ye,
'Evn for Him with whom nor cost,
Nor love, nor labour can be lost;
Him who never will deceive ye.
Let not my lord, the Mighty lover
Of soules, disdain that I discover
The hidden art
Of his high stratagem to win your heart;
It was his heavnly art
Kindly to crosse you
In your mistaken love,
That, at the next remove
Thence he might tosse you
And strike your troubled heart
Home to himself; to hide it in his brest
The bright ambrosiall nest,
Of love, of life, and everlasting rest.
Happy Mystake!
That thus shall wake
Your wise soul, never to be wonne
Now with a love below the sun.
Your first choyce failes, o when you choose agen
May it not be amongst the sonnes of Men.

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