James Shirley. "To his Mistris confined."

To his Mistris confined
by James Shirley

THINK not my Phebe, cause a cloud
Doth now thy heavenly beauty shroud,
                My wandring eye
Can stoop to common beauties of the sky,
        Be thou but kind, and this Eclipse
        Shall neither hinder eyes, nor lips;
                For we will meet
Within our hearts, and kisse, when none shall see't.

Nor canst thou in thy Prison be,
Without some loving signs of me,
                When thou dost spy
A sun-beam peep into thy room, 'tis I,
        For I am hid within that flame,
        And thus unto thy chamber came,
                To let thee see,
In what a Martyrdom I burn for thee.

There's no sad picture that doth dwell
Upon thy Arras wall, but well
                Resembles me.
No matter though our years do not agree,
        Love can make old, as well as time,
        And he that doth but twenty clime,
                If he will prove
As true as I, shews fourscore years in love.

Source:
The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse.
H. J. C. Grierson and G. Bullough, Eds.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. 408-409.

Renaissance, playwright, dramatist, comedy, theatre, theater, drama, Tudor, Early Modern, Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth I, court, entertainments, interludes, sixteenth-century, sixteenth century, Drama, dramatist, playwright, Shakespeare, tragedy, comedy, comic, tragic, actor, actors, player, players, theatre, theater, theatrical, Renaissance, English, poet, poetry, renaissance, literature, poem, poems, drama, theater, theatre, dramatist, renaissance, Renaissance, Tudor, England, Britain, British, English, poetry, poet, poem, poems, sixteenth, century, Renaissance, English, Shakespeare, Costume, Stratford, Canterbury, Armor, England, art, painting, music, tapestry, illumination, renaissance, tapestries, history, historical, medieval, festival, knights, armor, queen, books, plays, masques, study, literature, book, books, scholarship, language, writer, author, wit, elizabethan, renstudy, teaching, book, books, Jacobean, history, tradition, maps, satire, parody, humor, lute, Tudor, doctor, physician, criticism, Observations, Art, Poesy, masque, masques, Airs, airs, ayres, Ayres, Aires, song, songs, poem, poems, mask, masks, entertainments, entertainment, renaissance, carnival, commedia, comedy, music, dance