The Cure for Anything

Come and let us live my Dear,
Let us love and never fear,
What the sourest Fathers say:
Brightest Sol that dies today
Lives again as blithe tomorrow,
But if we dark sons of sorrow
Set; o then, how long a Night
Shuts the Eyes of our short light!
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin to tell
A Thousand, and a Hundred, score
An Hundred, and a Thousand more,
Till another Thousand smother
That, and that wipe off another.
Thus at last when we have numb’red
Many a Thousand, many a Hundred;
We’ll confound the reckoning quite,
And lose ourselves in wild delight:
While our joys so multiply,
As shall mock the envious eye.

-Richard Crashaw

Crashaw’s English translation is from the 1600s, but the original was Latin and written about 54 B.C.  I’m not usually for ancient poetry, but I read about a piece of jewelry that was engraved “Da mi basia mille” — Give me a thousand kisses, and I looked up the origin of that phrase. Simply lovely. 💗