The Tear

What bright soft thing is this?

    Sweet Mary, the fair eyes’ expense?

    A moist spark it is,

    A wat’ry diamond; from whence

The very term, I think, was found

The water of a diamond.

    O ’tis not a tear,

’Tis a star about to drop

From thine eye its sphere;

   The sun will stoop and take it up.

Proud will his sister be to wear

This thine eyes’ jewel in her ear.

    O ’tis a tear

Too true a tear; for no sad eyne,

    How sad so e’re,

Rain so true a teare as thine;

Each drop leaving a place so dear,

Weeps for itself, is its own tear.

    Such a pearl as this is,

   (Slipped from Aurora’s dewy breast)

The rose bud’s sweet lip kisses;

   And such the rose itself, when vexed

With ungentle flames, does shed,

Sweating in too warm a bed.

    Such the maiden gem,

   By the wanton spring put on,

Peeps from her parent stem,

   And blushes on the manly sun:

This wat’ry blossom of thy eyne,

Ripe, will make the richer wine.

    Faire drop, why quak’st thou so?

’Cause thou straight must lay thy head

    In the dust? o no;

   The dust shall never be thy bed:

A pillow for thee will I bring,

Stuffed with down of angels’ wing.

    Thus carried up on high,

(For to Heaven thou must go)

    Sweetly shalt thou lie

And in soft slumbers bathe thy woe;

Till the singing orbs awake thee,

And one of their bright chorus make thee.

    There thy self shalt be

An eye, but not a weeping one,

    Yet I doubt of thee,

Whether th’hadst rather there have shone

An eye of Heaven; or still shine here,

In th’Heaven of Mary’s eye, a tear.