Love's Farewell
Michael Drayton · 1612
Public domain
From The Golden Treasury, selected by Francis Turner Palgrave. Michael Drayton. The text is free of copyright in the United States. This copy is the poem, without the Project Gutenberg header.
Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,--
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,
--Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!