

TO HIS MISTRESS OBJECTING TO HIM

NEITHER TOYING OR TALKING.

by Robert Herrick





Y OU say I love not, 'cause I do not play

Still with your curls, and kiss the time away.

You blame me too, because I can't devise

Some sport to please those babies in your eyes :

By love's religion, I must here confess it,

The most I love when I the least express it.

Small griefs find tongues : full casks are ever found

To give (if any, yet) but little sound.

Deep waters noiseless are ; and this we know,

That chiding streams betray small depth below.

So, when love speechless is, she doth express

A depth in love and that depth bottomless.

Now, since my love is tongueless, know me such

Who speak but little 'cause I love so much.







Babies in your eyes, probably only a translation of

its metaphor, involved in the use of the Latin pupilla

(a little girl), our "pupil," for the central spot of the eye.

The metaphor doubtless arose from the small reflections

of the inlooker, which appear in the eyes of the person

gazed at; but we meet with it both intensified, as in the

phrase "to look babies in the eyes" (= to peer amorously),

and with its origin disregarded, as in Herrick, where

the "babies" are the pupils, and have an existence

independent of any inlooker.



Source:

Herrick, Robert. Works of Robert Herrick. vol I.

Alfred Pollard, ed.

London, Lawrence & Bullen, 1891. 16-17.



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