Keepe on your maske and hide your eye <br />For in beholding you I dye. <br />Your fatall beauty Gorgon-like <br />Dead with astonishment doth strike. <br />Your piercing eyes that now I see <br />Are worse than Basilisks to me. <br />Shut from mine eyes those hills of snow, <br />Their melting vally do not shew: <br />Those azure paths lead to despaire, <br />O vex me not, forbear, forbear; <br />For while I thus in torments dwell <br />The sight of Heaven is worse than Hell. <br />In those faire cheeks two pits doe lye <br />To bury those slaine by your eye: <br />So this at length doth comfort me <br />That fairely buried I shall be: <br />My grave with Roses, Lillies, spread, <br />Methinks tis life for to be dead: <br />Come then and kill me with your eye, <br />For if you let me live I dye. <br /> When I perceive your lips againe <br />Recover those your eyes have slaine, <br />With kisses that (like balsome pure) <br />Deep wounds as soone as made doe cure, <br />Methinks tis sicknesse to be sound, <br />And there's no health to such a wound. <br />When in your bosome I behold <br />Two hills of snow yet never cold, <br />Which lovers, whom your beauty kills, <br />Revive by climing those your hills, <br />Methinks there's life in such a death <br />That gives a hope of sweeter breath: <br />Then since one death prevails not where <br />So many antidotes are nere, <br />And your bright eyes doe but in vaine <br />Kill those who live as fast as slaine; <br />That I no more such death survive <br />Your way's to bury me alive <br />In place unknown, and so that I <br />Being dead may live and living dye.<br /><br />William Strode<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/keepe-on-your-maske-version-for-his-mistress/
