Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles | Page 5

beyond our poets' pitches,?And, working wonders, yet say all is duty!?Use you no eaglets' eyes, nor phoenix' feathers,?To tower the heaven from whence heaven's wonder sallies. For why? Your sun sings sweetly to her weathers,?Making a spring of winter in the valleys.?Show to the world though poor and scant my skill is?How sweet thoughts be, that are but thought on Phillis!
II
You sacred sea-nymphs pleasantly disporting?Amidst this wat'ry world, where now I sail;?If ever love, or lovers sad reporting,?Had power sweet tears from your fair eyes to hail;?And you, more gentle-hearted than the rest,?Under the northern noon-stead sweetly streaming,?Lend those moist riches of your crystal crest,?To quench the flames from my heart's ?tna streaming;?And thou, kind Triton, in thy trumpet relish?The ruthful accents of my discontent,?That midst this travel desolate and hellish,?Some gentle wind that listens my lament?May prattle in the north in Phillis' ears:?"Where Phillis wants, Damon consumes in tears."
III
In fancy's world an Atlas have I been,?Where yet the chaos of my ceaseless care?Is by her eyes unpitied and unseen,?In whom all gifts but pity planted are;?For mercy though still cries my moan-clad muse,?And every paper that she sends to beauty,?In tract of sable tears brings woeful news,?Of my true heart-kind thoughts, and loyal duty.?But ah the strings of her hard heart are strained?Beyond the harmony of my desires;?And though the happy heavens themselves have pained,?To tame her heart whose will so far aspires,?Yet she who claims the title of world's wonder,?Thinks all deserts too base to bring her under.
IV
Long hath my sufferance laboured to enforce?One pearl of pity from her pretty eyes,?Whilst I with restless rivers of remorse,?Have bathed the banks where my fair Phillis lies.?The moaning lines which weeping I have written,?And writing read unto my ruthful sheep,?And reading sent with tears that never fitten,?To my love's queen, that hath my heart in keep,?Have made my lambkins lay them down and sigh;?But Phillis sits, and reads, and calls them trifles.?Oh heavens, why climb not happy lines so high,?To rent that ruthless heart that all hearts rifles!?None writes with truer faith, or greater love,?Yet out, alas! I have no power to move.
V
Ah pale and dying infant of the spring,?How rightly now do I resemble thee!?That selfsame hand that thee from stalk did wring,?Hath rent my breast and robbed my heart from me.?Yet shalt thou live. For why? Thy native vigour?Shall thrive by woeful dew-drops of my dolor;?And from the wounds I bear through fancy's rigour,?My streaming blood shall yield the crimson color.?The ravished sighs that ceaseless take their issue?From out the furnace of my heart inflamed,?To yield you lasting springs shall never miss you;?So by my plaints and pains, you shall be famed.?Let my heart's heat and cold, thy crimson nourish,?And by my sorrows let thy beauty flourish.
VI
It is not death which wretched men call dying,?But that is very death which I endure,?When my coy-looking nymph, her grace envying,?By fatal frowns my domage doth procure.?It is not life which we for life approve,?But that is life when on her wool-soft paps?I seal sweet kisses which do batten love,?And doubling them do treble my good haps.?'Tis neither love the son, nor love the mother,?Which lovers praise and pray to; but that love is?Which she in eye and I in heart do smother.?Then muse not though I glory in my miss,?Since she who holds my heart and me in durance,?Hath life, death, love and all in her procurance.
VII
How languisheth the primrose of love's garden!?How trill her tears, th' elixir of my senses!?Ambitious sickness, what doth thee so harden??Oh spare, and plague thou me for her offences!?Ah roses, love's fair roses, do not languish;?Blush through the milk-white veil that holds you covered. If heat or cold may mitigate your anguish,?I'll burn, I'll freeze, but you shall be recovered.?Good God, would beauty mark now she is crased,?How but one shower of sickness makes her tender,?Her judgments then to mark my woes amazed,?To mercy should opinion's fort surrender!?And I,--oh would I might, or would she meant it!?Should hery[A] love, who now in heart lament it.
[Footnote A: _hery_, praise.]
VIII
No stars her eyes to clear the wandering night,?But shining suns of true divinity,?That make the soul conceive her perfect light!?No wanton beauties of humanity?Her pretty brows, but beams that clear the sight?Of him that seeks the true philosophy!?No coral is her lip, no rose her fair,?But even that crimson that adorns the sun.?No nymph is she, but mistress of the air,?By whom my glories are but new begun.?But when I touch and taste as others do,?I then shall write and you shall wonder too.
IX
The dewy roseate Morn had with her hairs?In sundry sorts the Indian clime adorned;?And now her eyes apparrelèd in tears,?The loss of lovely Memnon long had mourned,?When as she spied the nymph whom I admire,?Combing her locks, of which the yellow gold?Made blush