Texts by Ben Jonson

Revels
O, that joy so soon should waste!
Or so sweet a bliss
As a kiss
Might not for ever last!
So sugared, so melting, so soft, so delicious,
The dew that lies on roses,
When the Morn herself discloses,
Is not so precious.
O, rather than I would it smother,
Were I to taste such another,
It should be my wishing
That I might die kissing.

Song from The Silent Woman
Still to be neat, still to be dressed,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all th’ adulteries of art:
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

Opening Doors
He smashed his hand
in opening a door for her,
and less pain than
embarrassment shrieked through him.
Concealing both,
grimacing as if theatrically,
he asked himself
who he thought he was to go
around opening
doors for anyone, much less for her.

On My First Daughter
Here lies, to each her parents’ ruth,
Mary, the daughter of their youth;
Yet all heaven’s gifts being heaven’s due,
It makes the father less to rue.
At six months’ end she parted hence
With safety of her innocence;
Whose soul heaven’s queen, whose name she bears,
In comfort of her mother’s tears,
Hath placed amongst her virgin-train:
Where, while that severed doth remain,
This grave partakes the fleshly birth;
Which cover lightly, gentle earth!

For a Girl in a Book
She, composite of all my loves,
less real than most, more real than all;
of my making, all the good and
some of the bad, yet of yourself;
sole, unique, strong, alone,
whole, independent, one: yet mine
in that you cannot be unfaithful.

Of Life And Death
The ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds:
Through which our merit leads us to our meeds.
How wilful blind is he, then, that would stray,
And hath it in his powers to make his way!
This world death’s region is, the other life’s:
And here it should be one of our first strifes,
So to front death, as men might judge us past it:
For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.

Love-All
The decorously informative church
Guide to Sex suggested that any urge
could well be controlled by playing tennis:
and the game provided also ‘many
harmless opportunities for healthy
social intercourse between the sexes.’
For weeks the drawings in the Guide misled
me as to what went where, but nonetheless
I booked the public courts and learnt the game
with other curious youths of my age:
and later joined a club, to lose six one,
six love, in the first round of the Open.
But the only girl I ever met had
her ‘energies channelled’ far too bloody
‘healthily,’ and very quickly let me
know that love was merely another means
of saying nil. It was not as though I
became any good at tennis; either.

Living by
Walking, snow falling, it is possible
to focus at various distances
in turn on separate flakes, sharply engage
the attention at several spatial points:
the nearer cold and more uncomfortable,
the farther distanced and almost pleasing.
Living, time passing, it is preferable
to focus the memory in turn upon
the more distant retrospects in order
that the present mind may retain its peace.
Yet knowing that seeing and remembering
Are both, of course, personal illusions.

The Short Fear
My awkward grossness grows: I go down, through
I maintain my self in the conviction
that I have as much to say as others
and more apposite ways of saying it
Certainly I feel it has all been said
The short fear is that even saying it
in my own way is equally pointless

Begging Another
For love’s sake, kiss me once again;
I long, and should not beg in vain,
Here’s none to spy or see;
Why do you doubt or stay?
I’ll taste as lightly as the bee
That doth but touch his flower and flies away.
Once more, and faith I will be gone;
Can he that loves ask less than one?
Nay, you may err in this
And all your bounty wrong;
This could be called but half a kiss,
What we’re but once to do, we should do long.
I will but mend the last, and tell
Where, how it should have relished well;
Join lip to lip, and try
Each suck other’s breath.
And whilst our tongues perplexed lie,
Let who will, think us dead or wish our death.
For love’s sake, kiss me once again.