| Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
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| Before I knew thy face or name;
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| So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
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| Angels affect us oft, and worshipp’d be.
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| Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
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| Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
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| But since my soul, whose child love is,
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| Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
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| More subtle than the parent is
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| Love must not be, but take a body too;
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| And therefore what thou wert, and who,
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| I bid Love ask, and now
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| That I assume thy body, I allow,
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| And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.
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| Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
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| And so more steadily to have gone,
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| With wares which would sink admiration,
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| I saw I had love’s pinnace overfraught;
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| Thy every hair for love to work upon
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| Is much too much; |
| some fitter must be sought;
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| For, nor in nothing, nor in things
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| Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere;
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| Then as an angel face and wings
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| Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
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| So thy love may be my love’s sphere;
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| Just such disparity
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| As is 'twixt air’s and angel’s purity,
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| 'Twixt women’s love, and men’s, will ever be. |