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To Julia, In Her Dawn, or Daybreak

by Robert Herrick, 1648

By the next kindling of the day,
  My Julia, thou shalt see,
Ere Ave–Mary thou canst say
  I’ll come and visit thee.

Yet ere thou counsel’st with thy glass,
  Appear thou to mine eyes
As smooth, and nak’d, as she that was
  The prime of paradise.

If blush thou must, then blush thou through
  A lawn, that thou mayst look
As purest pearls, or pebbles do
  When peeping through a brook.

As lilies shrin’d in crystal, so
  Do thou to me appear;
Or damask roses when they grow
  To sweet acquaintance there.

Published in Hesperides
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