William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.
To a Mistress DyingSir William Davenant (1606–1668)
Lover.Your beauty, ripe and calm and fresh
As eastern summers are,
Must now, forsaking time and flesh,
Add light to some small star.
Their light by hers relief might find;
But Death will lead her to a shade
Where Love is cold and Beauty blind.
Think every mistress, when she dies,
Is changed at least into a star:
And who dares doubt the poets wise?
To what abode they go;
Since Knowledge is but Sorrow’s spy,
It is not safe to know.