Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles | Page 7

light!?I part from bliss to dwell with ceaseless moan,?I part from life, since I from beauty part,?I part from peace, to pine in care alone,?I part from ease to die with dreadful smart.?I part--oh death! for why? this world contains?More care and woe than with despair remains.?Oh loath depart, wherein such sorrows dwell,?As all conceits are scant the same to tell!
XVII
Ah fleeting weal, ah sly deluding sleep,?That in one moment giv'st me joy and pain!?How do my hopes dissolve to tears in vain,?As wont the snows, 'fore angry sun to weep!?Ah noisome life that hath no weal in keep!?My forward grief hath form and working might;?My pleasures like the shadows take their flight;?My path to bliss is tedious, long and steep.?Twice happy thou Endymion that embracest?The live-long night thy love within thine arms,?Where thou fond dream my longèd weal defacest?Whilst fleeting and uncertain shades thou placest?Before my eyes with false deluding charms!?Ah instant sweets which do my heart revive,?How should I joy if you were true alive!
XVIII
As where two raging venoms are united,?Which of themselves dissevered life would sever,?The sickly wretch of sickness is acquited,?Which else should die, or pine in torments ever;?So fire and frost, that hold my heart in seizure,?Restore those ruins which themselves have wrought,?Where if apart they both had had their pleasure,?The earth long since her fatal claim had caught.?Thus two united deaths keep me from dying;?I burne in ice, and quake amidst the fire,?No hope midst these extremes or favour spying;?Thus love makes me a martyr in his ire.?So that both cold and heat do rather feed?My ceaseless pains, than any comfort breed.
XIX
Thou tyrannizing monarch that dost tire?My love-sick heart through those assaulting eyes,?That are the lamps which lighten my desire!?If nought but death thy fury may suffice,?Not for my peace, but for thy pleasure be it,?That Phillis, wrathful Phillis that repines me?All grace but death, may deign to come and see it,?And seeing grieve at that which she assigns me.?This only boon for all my mortal bane?I crave and cry for at thy mercy seat:?That when her wrath a faithful heart hath slain,?And soul is fled, and body reft of heat,?She might perceive how much she might command,?That had my life and death within her hand.
XX
Some praise the looks, and others praise the locks?Of their fair queens, in love with curious words;?Some laud the breast where love his treasure locks,?All like the eye that life and love affords.?But none of these frail beauties and unstable?Shall make my pen riot in pompous style;?More greater gifts shall my grave muse enable,?Whereat severer brows shall never smile.?I praise her honey-sweeter eloquence,?Which from the fountain of true wisdom floweth,?Her modest mien that matcheth excellence,?Her matchless faith which from her virtue groweth;?And could my style her happy virtues equal,?Time had no power her glories to enthral.
EGLOGA PRIMA DEMADES DAMON
DEMADES
Now scourge of winter's wrack is well nigh spent,?And sun gins look more longer on our clime,?And earth no more to sorrow doth consent,?Why been thy looks forlorn that view the prime??Unneth thy flocks may feed to see thee faint,?Thou lost, they lean, and both with woe attaint.?For shame! Cast off these discontented looks;?For grief doth wait on life, though never sought;?So Thenot wrote admired for pipe and books.?Then to the spring attemper thou thy thought,?And let advice rear up thy drooping mind,?And leave to weep thy woes unto the wind.
DAMON
Ah Demades, no wonder though I wail,?For even the spring is winter unto me!?Look as the sun the earth doth then avail,?When by his beams her bowels warmèd be;?Even so a saint more sun-bright in her shining?First wrought my weal, now hastes my winter's pining. Which lovely lamp withdrawn from my poor eyes,?Both parts of earth and fire drowned up in woe?In winter dwell. My joy, my courage dies;?My lambs with me that do my winter know?For pity scorn the spring that nigheth near,?And pine to see their master's pining cheer.?The root which yieldeth sap unto the tree?Draws from the earth the means that make it spring;?And by the sap the scions fostered be,?All from the sun have comfort and increasing?And that fair eye that lights this earthly ball?Kills by depart, and nearing cheereth all.?As root to tree, such is my tender heart,?Whose sap is thought, whose branches are content;?And from my soul they draw their sweet or smart,?And from her eye, my soul's best life is lent;?Which heavenly eye that lights both earth and air,?Quells by depart and quickens by repair.
DEMADES
Give period to the process of thy plaint,?Unhappy Damon, witty in self-grieving;?Tend thou thy flocks; let tyrant love attaint?Those tender hearts that made their love their living.?And as kind time keeps Phillis from thy sight,?So let prevention banish fancy quite.
Cast hence this idle fuel of desire,?That feeds that flame wherein thy heart consumeth;?Let reason school thy will which doth aspire,?And