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Mediocrity in Love Rejected
- Thomas Carew (1598? - 1639?)
Give me more love, or more disdain;
The torrid or the frozen zone
Bring equal ease unto my pain;
The temperate affords me none;
Either extreme, of love or hate,
Is sweeter than a calm estate.
Give me a storm; if it be love,
Like Danae in that golden shower,
I swim in pleasure; if it prove
Disdain, that torrent will devour
My vulture hopes; and he's possessed
Of heaven that's but from hell released.
Then crown my joys, or cure my pain;
Give me more love, or more disdain.
The above poem can be found for example in:
Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, eds. The Norton Anthology of Poetry
(Fourth Edition). New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
Bryant, William Cullen, ed. A New Library of Poetry and Song (Utopian Edition).
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1927. (where it is titled using the first line)
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