Edmund Waller’s “Song ("Go, lovely rose!”) was written in 1645 and is divided into four stanzas of five lines. These stanzas all have a rhyme structure of “ABABB”, with the “A” lines containing four syllables and the “B” lines containing eight, and the poem is mostly iambic. The (male) speaker send...
Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Tell her that's young,
And shuns to have her graces spied,
That hadst thou sprung
In deserts, where no men abide,
Thou must have uncommended died.
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired;
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
Then die! that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!