I now think Love is rather deaf than blind, For else it could not be That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me And cast my love behind. I'm sure my language to her was as sweet, And every close did meet In sentence of as subtle feet, As hath the youngest He That sits in shadow of Apollo's tree. O, but my conscious fears, That fly my thoughts between, Tell me that she hath seen My hundred of gray hairs, Told seven and forty years Read so much waste, as she cannot embrace My mountain belly and my rocky face; And all these through her eyes have stopp'd her ears.
Composition Date: 1619-20 Form:
Published in Works, 1640, but composed in 1619-20, as line 15 suggests.
Line 17 . . . my rocky face.
Dekker thus satirized Jonson's face in Satiro-mastix, 1602:
