Summons to Love
by William Drummond
Scottish poet. The main collections of his verse are Poems, Amorous, Funereal, Divine, Pastoral, in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals (1616), The Muses Welcome (1618), and Flowers of Sion (1623), which includes the religious sonnets 'For the Magdalene' and 'Saint John Baptist'. He spent many years writing a History of Scotland 1423-1524, and another notable prose work is A Cypress Grove (1623), a meditation on death. His notes on Ben Jonson's conversation were published in 1832.
Summons to Love
by William Drummond
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Phoebus, arise! And paint the sable skies With azure, white, and red: Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed That she may thy career with roses spread: The nightingales thy coming each-where sing: Make an eternal spring! Give life to this dark world which lieth dead; Spread forth thy golden hair In larger locks than thou wast wont before, And emperor-like decore With diadem of pearl thy temples fair: Chase hence the ugly night Which serves but to make dear thy glorious light. This is that happy morn, That day, long-wished day, Of all my life so dark, (If cruel stars have not my ruin sworn, And fates my hopes betray), Which, purely white, deserves An everlasting diamond should it mark. This is the morn should bring unto this grove My Love, to hear and recompense my love. Fair King, who all preserves, But show thy blushing beams And thou two sweeter eyes Shalt see than those which by Peneus' streams Did once thy heart surprise. Now, Flora, deck thyself in fairest guise: If that ye winds would hear A voice surpassing far Amphion's lyre, Your furious chiding stay; Let Zephyr only breathe, And with her tresses play. The winds all silent are, And Phoebus in his chair Ensaffroning sea and air Makes vanish every star: Night like a drunkard reels Beyond the hills, to shun his flaming wheels: The fields with flowers are decked in every hue, The clouds with orient gold spangle their blue; Here is the pleasant place, And nothing wanting is, save She, alas!
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