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Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

My Picture Left in Scotland


              1I now think Love is rather deaf than blind,
              2For else it could not be
              3           That she,
              4Whom I adore so much, should so slight me
              5And cast my love behind.
              6I'm sure my language to her was as sweet,
              7And every close did meet
              8In sentence of as subtle feet,
              9As hath the youngest He
            10That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree.
            11O, but my conscious fears,
            12That fly my thoughts between,
            13Tell me that she hath seen
            14My hundred of gray hairs,
            15Told seven and forty years
            16Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace
            17My mountain belly and my rocky face;
            18And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears.

Notes

1] Works, 1640, but composed in 1619-20, as line 15 suggests.

17] my rocky face. Dekker thus satirized Jonson's face in Satiro-mastix, 1602: "full of pockey-holes and pimples,'' "full of oylet-holes, like the cover of a warming pan."


Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Ben Jonson, The workes of Benjamin Jonson (London: R. Bishop, sold by A. Crooke, 1640). STC 14754. stc Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto). Also British Library copy as microfilmed in English Books 1475-1640. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms. P & R 14754 * 20250.
First publication date: 1640
RPO poem editor: F. D. Hoeniger
RP edition: 3RP 1.158.
Recent editing: 4:2002/4/3

Composition date: 1619 - 1620
Rhyme: abbbacccbbdeedfggf


Other poems by Ben Jonson