IF thou dost the number know
Of the leaves on every bough,
If thou can’st the reckoning keep
Of the sands within the deep;
Thee of all men will I take,
And my Love’s accomptant make.
Of Athenians first a score
Set me down; then fifteen more;
Add a regiment to these
Of Corinthian mistresses,
For the most renown’d for fair
In Achæa sojourn there;
Next our Lesbian Beauties tell;
Those that in Ionia dwell;
Those of Rhodes and Caria count;
To two thousand they amount.
Wonder’st thou I love so many?
’Las of Syria we not any,
Egypt yet, nor Crete have told,
Where his orgies Love doth hold.
What to those then wilt thou say
Which in eastern Bactria,
Or the western Gades remain?
But give o’er, thou toil’st in vain;
For the sum which thou dost seek
Puzzles all arithmetic.

— Translated by Thomas Stanley, 1651.

NOT to love a pain is deem’d,
And to love’s the same esteem’d:
But of all the greatest pain
Is to love unlov’d again.
Birth in love is now rejected,
Parts and arts are disrespected,
Only gold is look’d upon.
A curse take him that was won
First to doat upon it; hence
Springs ‘twixt brothers difference;
This makes parents slighted; this
War’s dire cause and fuel is:
And what’s worst, by this alone
Are we lovers overthrown.

— Translation by Thomas Stanley, 1651.

SEE the Spring herself discloses,
And the Graces gather roses;
See how the becalmed seas
Now their swelling waves appease;
How the duck swims, how the crane
Comes from winter home again;
See how Titan’s cheerful ray
Chaseth the dark clouds away;
Now in their new robes of green
Are the plowman’s labors seen:
Now the lusty teeming Earth
Springs each hour with a new birth;
Now the olive blooms: the vine
Now doth with plump pendants shine;
And with leaves and blossoms now
Freshly bourgeons every bough.

Translation by Thomas Stanley, 1651.