Love’s Horoscope
LOVE, brave Virtue’s younger brother,Erst hath made my heart a mother.She consults the anxious spheres,To calculate her young son’s years;She asks if sad or saving powersGave omen to his infant hours;She asks each star that then stood byIf poor Love shall live or die.
Ah, my heart, is that the way?Are these the beams that rule thy day?Thou know’st a face in whose each lookBeauty lays ope Love’s fortune-book,On whose fair revolutions waitThe obsequious motions of Love’s fate.Ah, my heart! her eyes and sheHave taught thee new astrology.Howe’er Love’s native hours were set,Whatever starry synod met,’Tis in the mercy of her eye,If poor Love shall live or die.
If those sharp rays, putting onPoints of death, bid Love be gone;Though the heavens in council satTo crown an uncontrolled fate;Though their best aspects twined uponThe kindest constellation,Cast amorous glances on his birth,And whispered the confederate earthTo pave his paths with all the goodThat warms the bed of youth and blood:—Love has no plea against her eye;Beauty frowns, and Love must die.
But if her milder influence move,And gild the hopes of humble Love;—Though heaven’s inauspicious eyeLay black on Love’s nativity;Though every diamond in Jove’s crownFixed his forehead to a frown;—Her eye a strong appeal can give,Beauty smiles, and Love shall live.
O, if Love shall live, O where,But in her eye, or in her ear,In her breast, or in her breath,Shall I hide poor Love from death?For in the life aught else can give,Love shall die, although he live.
Or, if Love shall die, O where,But in her eye, or in her ear,In her breath, or in her breast,Shall I build his funeral nest?While Love shall thus entombed lie,Love shall live, although he die!