“Come and let us live my Deare,Let us love and never feare,What the sowrest Fathers say:Brightest Sol that dies to dayLives againe as blithe to morrow,But if we darke sons of sorrowSet; o then, how long a NightShuts the Eyes of our short light!Then let amorous kisses dwellOn our lips, begin and tellA Thousand, and a Hundred, scoreAn Hundred, and a Thousand more,Till another Thousand smotherThat, and that wipe of another.Thus at last when we have numbredMany a Thousand, many a Hundred;Wee’l confound the reckoning quite,And lose our selves in wild delight:While our joyes so multiply,As shall mocke the envious eye.”

“Then let amourous kisses dwellOn our lips, begin and tellA Thousand and a Hundred scoreA Hundred and a Thousand more”

“We should live, my Lesbia, and loveAnd value all the talk of stricterOld men at a single penny.Suns can set and rise again;For us, once our brief light has set,There's one unending night for sleeping.Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,Then another thousand, then a second hundred,Then still another thousand, then a hundred;Then, when we've made many thousands,We'll muddle them so as not to knowOr lest some villain overlook usKnowing the total of our kisses.(Translated by Guy Lee)”

“O friend, for the morrow let us not worryThis moment we have now, let us not hurryWhen our time comes, we shall not tarryWith seven thousand-year-olds, our burden carry”

“Give me a kiss, and to that kiss a score; then to that twenty, add a hundred more; a thousand to that hundred: so kiss on, to make that thousand up a million. treble that million, and when that is done, let's kiss afresh, as when we first begun!”

“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days . . .nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”