85. UPON LOVE.
Love scorch'd my finger, but did spare
The burning of my heart;
To signify in love my share
Should be a little part.
Little I love; but if that he
Would but that heat recall;
That joint to ashes burnt should be,[1]
Ere I would love at all.
86. TO DEAN BOURN, A RUDE RIVER IN DEVON, BY WHICH SOMETIMES HE LIVED.
Dean Bourn, farewell; I never look to see
Dean, or thy watery[2] incivility.
Thy rocky bottom, that doth tear thy streams
And makes them frantic even to all extremes,
To my content I never should behold,
Were thy streams silver, or thy rocks all gold.
Rocky thou art, and rocky we discover
Thy men, and rocky are thy ways all over.
O men, O manners, now and ever known
To be a rocky generation!
A people currish, churlish as the seas,
And rude almost as rudest savages,
With whom I did, and may re-sojourn when
Rocks turn to rivers, rivers turn to men.
