LOVE POEMS.

LOVE rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below, and saints above,
For love is heaven and heaven is love.

The Lay of the Last Minstrel

A DITTY.

My true-love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one to the other given;
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his, because in me it bides:

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

ON A GIRDLE.

THAT which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind:
No monarch but would give his crown,
His arms might do what this hath done.

It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer;
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move!

A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair:
Give me but what this ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round.

EDMUND WALLER.

LOVE ALTERS NOT.

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove :

O no! it is an ever fixèd mark

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be

taken.