Against Love

Katherine Philips

Edited by Jack Lynch

The text comes from Philips’s Poems by the Most Deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, the Matchless Orinda (1667).


Hence Cupid with your cheating Toies,
Your real Griefs, and painted Joies,
Your Pleasure which it self destroies.
   Lovers like men in Feavers burn and rave,
   And only what will injure them do crave. [5]
Mens weakness makes Love so severe,
They give him power by their fear,
And make the Shackles which they wear.
   Who to another does his heart submit,
   Makes his own Idol, and then worships it. [10]
Him whose heart is all his own,
Peace and liberty does crown,
He apprehends no killing frown.
   He feels no raptures which are joies diseas’d,
   And is not much transported, but still pleas’d. [15]