John Suckling

If of herself she cannot love, Nothing can make her: The devil take her!

Sir John Suckling (February 10, 1609 – June 1, 1642) was an English Cavalier poet.

Sourced

Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?

Full text at Wikisource

• Why so pale and wan, fond lover
  Prithee, why so pale?

• Will, when looking well can't move her,
  Looking ill prevail?
  Prithee, why so pale?

• Quit, quit, for shame, this will not move:
  This cannot take her.
  If of herself she cannot love,
  Nothing can make her:
  The devil take her!

Other poems

• If I a fancy take
  To black and blue,
  That fancy doth it beauty make.
  • Of thee (kind boy) I ask no red and white

• 'Tis now since I sat down before
  That foolish fort, a heart,
  (Time strangely spent) a year, and more,
  And still I did my part:
  • 'Tis Now, Since I Sat Down Before

• Oh for some honest lover's ghost,
  Some kind unbodied post
  Sent from the shades below!
  I strangely long to know
  Whether the nobler chaplets wear
  Those that their mistress' scorn did bear,
  Or those that were used kindly.
  • Oh! For some honest lover's ghost

• Her feet beneath her petticoat
  Like little mice stole in and out,
  As if they feared the light;
  But oh, she dances such a way!
  No sun upon an Easter-day
  Is half so fine a sight.
  • Ballad upon a Wedding. Compare: "Her pretty feet, like snails, did creep A little out, and then, As if they played at bo-peep, Did soon draw in again", Robert Herrick, To Mistress Susanna Southwell.

Unsourced

• Her lips were red, and one was thin;
  Compared with that was next her chin,—
  Some bee had stung it newly.
  
  • Ballad upon a Wedding.

• 'T is expectation makes a blessing dear;
  Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were.
  
  • Against Fruition.

• She is pretty to walk with,
  And witty to talk with,
  And pleasant, too, to think on.
  • Brennoralt, Act ii.

• Her face is like the milky way i' the sky,—
  A meeting of gentle lights without a name.
  • Brennoralt, Act iii.

• But as when an authentic watch is shown,
  Each man winds up and rectifies his own,
  So in our very judgments.
  • Aglaura, Epilogue. Compare: "'T is with our judgments as our watches,—none Go just alike, yet each believes his own", Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, part i. line 9.

• The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
  • The Goblins. The same is found in William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act iii, Sc. 4.

• Nick of time.
  • The Goblins.

• "High characters," cries one, and he would see
  Things that ne'er were, nor are, nor e'er will be.
  • The Goblins. Epilogue. Compare: "Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be", Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, part ii, line 53; "There's no such thing in Nature, and you'll draw A faultless monster which the world ne'er saw", John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby, Essay on Poetry.

External links

• Selected works at the Library of Toronto