To His Coy Love
by Michael Drayton

English poet. His most important work is contained in the 1619 edition of his Poems, and includes the sonnet 'Since There's No Help, Come Let Us Kiss and Part' which D.G. Rossetti described as 'almost the best in the language, if not quite'. His 1606 Poems Lyric and Pastoral introduced the form of the Horatian ode to English poetry, and contains 'To the Virginian Voyage' and 'Fair Stood the Wind for France'. He also wrote various poems on figures from mythology and history, notably England's Heroical Epistles (1597). His great work Poly-Olbion was intended as 'a chorographical description of all the tracts, rivers, mountains, forests, and other parts of Great Britain', and is one of the longest poems in English. Other works in his vast output include Idea. The Shepherd's Garland (1593), Idea's Mirror (1594), and Endymion and Phoebe (1595), one of the sources for Keats' Endymion.

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To His Coy Love
by Michael Drayton

I pray thee leave, love me no more,
Call home the heart you gave me.
I but in vain that saint adore
That can, but will not, save me:
These poor half-kisses kill me quite;
Was ever man thus served?
Amidst an ocean of delight
For pleasure to be starved.

Show me no more those snowy breasts
With azure riverets branched,
Where whilst mine eye with plenty feasts,
Yet is my thirst not stanched.
O Tantalus, thy pains ne'er tell,
By me thou art prevented:
'Tis nothing to be plagued in hell,
But thus in heaven tormented.

Clip me no more in those dear arms,
Nor thy life's comfort call me;
O, these are but too powerful charms,
And do but more enthral me.
But see how patient I am grown,
In all this coil about thee;
Come, nice thing, let my heart alone,
I cannot live without thee!

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To His Coy Love by Michael Drayton