Thursday, June 22, 2023

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

“Upon my Picture Left in Scotland” is one of the finest and most memorable poems in Ben Jonson’s Execration against Vulcan, London, 1640. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. 

My Picture Left in Scotland 

I now think Love is rather deaf than blind, 
For else it could not be 
That she, 
Whom I adore so much, should so slight me 
And cast my love behind. 
I'm sure my language to her was as sweet, 
And every close did meet 
In sentence of as subtle feet, 
As hath the youngest He 
That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree. 

O, but my conscious fears, 
That fly my thoughts between, 
Tell me that she hath seen 
My hundred of gray hairs, 
Told seven and forty years 
Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace 
My mountain belly and my rocky face; 
And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears. 

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