I was reading an anthology called Parnassian Molehill (1953) the other day, in which I found a rather beautiful poem by The Rev Thomas Nuce (1540? - 1617). This is the poem in question:
Swift winged love, men's fancy fond, in vain
A mercy wanting God to be doth fain:
And arms his hands with wounding weapons keen
And bows with burning brands for lovers green
Of Venus to be sprung they all accord,
And blindly forged of thunder's limping lord.
Bland love the mind of great torment sore appears,
And buddeth first in frolic youthful years
Who while we drink of Fortune's pleasant cup,
With lazy pampering riot, is nestled up:
Whom if to foster up you leave at length
It fleeting falls away with broken strength
This is in all our life (as I suppose)
The greatest cause how pleasure first arose,
Which sith mankind by brooding hideth aye
Through gladsome love that fierce wild beasts doth sway
It never can from manly breast depart.
This selfsame god I wish with all my heart
The wedlock lights to bear before our grace,
And fasten poppy sure in our bed place.
(I modernised the spellings when I typed it out, but there are numerous archaic spellings in the poem as printed in the aforementioned anthology, but I am not going to undo my modernisations unless it causes major inconvenience to an answerer.)
This Nuce fellow seems to be a bit obscure. Wikipedia says that his main contribution to English literature was a translation of Seneca's tragedies, to which he also added a verse preface to a translation of John Studley's. Both are available online, and I cannot find the above lines in either work. Can anyone else find said lines printed anywhere other than Parnassian Molehill? Are they a translation? Are they part of a longer poem?