"Rosania to Lucasia on her Letters"
author: Katherine Philips
source date: 1667
language: en
availability: Published by Literature in Context under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Rosania to Lucasia on her Letters ["Rosania" refers to Mary Aubrey, a friend of Philips's from childhood. "Lucasia" refers to Ann Owen, who was Philips's closest friend and the person to whom many of her poems are addressed. This poem, unusually, sees Philips takes the voice of someone other than herself, imagining two members of her coterie writing to each other.]

Ah strike outright, or else forbear,
Be more kind, or more severe;
For in this checquer'd [Checkered or full of alteration and varying character (Oxford English Dictionary).] mixture I
Cannot live, and would not die,
And must I neither? tell me why?

When thy Pen thy kindness tells,
My heart transported leaps and swells.
But when my greedy eye does stray
Thy threat'ned absence to survey,
That heart is struck and faints away.

To give me title to rich land,
And the fruition to withstand,
Or solemnly to send the key
Of treasures I must never see,
Would it contempt or bounty be?

This is such refin'd distress,
That thy sad Lovers sigh for less,
Though thou their hopes hast overthrown,
They lose but what they ne're have known,
But I am plunder'd from my own.

How canst thou thy Rosania prize,
And be so cruel and so wise?
For if such rigid policy
Must thy resolves dispute with me,
Where then is friendship's victory?

Kindness is of so brave a make
'Twil rather death then [than]bondage take,
So that if thine no power can have,
Give it and me one common grave,
But quickly either kill or save.