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The Primrose

by Robert Herrick, 1648

Ask me why I send you here
This sweet Infanta of the year?
  Ask me why I send to you
This primrose, thus bepearl’d with dew?
  I will whisper to your ears:
The sweets of love are mix’d with tears.

  Ask me why this flower does show
So yellow-green, and sickly too?
  Ask me why the stalk is weak
And bending (yet it doth not break)?
  I will answer: These discover
What fainting hopes are in a lover.

Published in Hesperides
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