To Lucasta, on Going Beyond the Seas
Richard Lovelace · 1649
Public domain
From The Golden Treasury, selected by Francis Turner Palgrave. Richard Lovelace. The text is free of copyright in the United States. This copy is the poem, without the Project Gutenberg header.
If to be absent were to be
Away from thee;
Or that when I am gone
You or I were alone;
Then, my Lucasta, might I crave
Pity from blustering wind, or swallowing wave.
Though seas and land betwixt us both,
Our faith and troth,
Like separated souls,
All time and space controls:
Above the highest sphere we meet
Unseen, unknown; and greet as Angels greet.
So then we do anticipate
Our after-fate,
And are alive i' the skies,
If thus our lips and eyes
Can speak like spirits unconfined
In Heaven, their earthy bodies left behind.